Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Coked Encounters

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Jimmy and Stiggs

by Hope Madden

Few filmmakers capture drug fueled horror mayhem quite like Joe Begos (Bliss, VFW). His latest is an exercise in minimalism. Not in terms of drugs or mayhem, just filmmaking.

An alien invasion horror flick, Jimmy and Stiggs sees Jimmy (Begos), an out of work filmmaker, hitting the stuff hard in his LA apartment when he blacks out and loses an entire night. Certain an alien abduction was involved, and that those slimy sardine MF’ers are coming back for him, he calls his best friend Stiggs (Matt Mercer) for advice.

The thing is, Stiggs is six months sober and hasn’t spoken to Jimmy in ages. In fact, in an opening sequence shot go-pro style from Jimmy’s inebriated point of view, we learn that Stiggs isn’t interested in producing Jimmy’s new film, news that sends Jimmy spiraling.

Still, worried for his old friend’s sanity and welfare, Stiggs shows up at Jimmy’s place just in time for the aliens to return.

What Begos creates, in a quick 80 minutes with mainly two actors and one increasingly and impressively demolished set, is DIY filmmaking at its most profanity strewn.

Given the sheer volume of cocaine and whiskey, the incoherence of the plot feels right at home. Begos amplifies the nuttiness with wild cuts, possible dream sequences, time shifts, and the periodic use of first person, go-pro POV sequences. The result is a dizzying, black-light colorful excuse to bash practical FX aliens to bits and let their day-glo goo decorate the apartment.

On the downside, Begos is no actor, and even 80 minutes of isolation with Jimmy and his coked-up ranting feels too long. Mercer fares better, leading some Apocalypse Now type insanity that plays really well in this context.

Jimmy and Stiggs was shot over 4 years, beginning during lockdown and extending until completion, mainly in Begos’s LA home. It’s a wild bit of alien fun that fades to black just before it outstays its welcome.

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Night Moves

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Weapons

by Hope Madden

I’m not saying that Barbarian was anything less than a creepy, disturbing good time. Writer/director Zach Cregger’s 2022 bizarre, brutal minefield of surprises announced him as a master of misdirection, unsettling humor, and horror of the nastiest sort.

I’m just saying Weapons takes a lot of what worked in that film and sharpens it to a spooky edge. No throw-away laughs, no grotesque b-movie shenanigans, just an elaborate mystery slowly revealing itself, ratcheting tension, and leading to a bloody satisfying climax.

Unspooling as an epilogue followed by character-specific chapters, the film builds around a single event, developing dread as it delivers character studies of a town of hapless, fractured, flawed individuals in over their heads.

Julia Garner anchors the tale as a 3rd grade teacher who arrives to class one fateful morning with only one student in the room. Aside from little Alex (Cary Christopher, heartbreaking), none of Mrs. Gandy’s class made it to school today because every single one of them left their beds at 2:17 that morning to vanish into the night.

Since she’s what the kids have in common, the town suspects that she is to blame. This is especially true of young Matthew’s dad, Archer (Josh Brolin), who also gets a chapter.

As it did in Barbarian, this character-by-character approach allows for new information to bleed into what the audience knows, rather than what the characters know. But as each new tale opens our eyes to the mystery, it also lets this solid cast work with Cregger’s game writing to do some remarkable character work. Brolin’s angry, grieving confusion rings painfully true. And Garner seems to relish the opportunity to explore Mrs. Gandy’s unlikeable side.

Benedict Wong contributes the sweetest, and therefore most unfortunate, performance, but it’s the way Cregger lets each actor breathe and settle into idiosyncrasies and failings that keeps you invested. It’s the dark humor that’s most unsettling.

This is smartly crafted, beautifully acted horror. Those who worry Cregger’s left nasty genre work behind for something more elevated need not fear. As crafty as this film is, there’s not a lot of metaphor or social consciousness afoot. Weapons is just here to work your nerves, make you gasp, and shed some blood. It does it pretty well.

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Super Freaky

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Freakier Friday

by George Wolf

The story goes that it was the way-too-early early Oscar talk for Jamie Lee Curtis in 2003’s Freaky Friday that inspired her hubby, Christopher Guest, to make For Your Consideration. No surprise, then, that Curtis is the best thing about the sequel.

Freakier Friday catches us up with Dr. Tess Coleman (Curtis) and her daughter, Anna (Lindsay Lohan). Tess is a therapist working on a podcast and a book, while Anna has moved on from teen pop stardom to become a record exec crafting the career of a new young diva (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever).

Anna is also a single mom to Harper (Julia Butters), who isn’t too fond of Lily (Sophia Hammons), the new girl in school who has recently arrived from London. But Anna is pretty fond of Lily’s dad, Eric (Manny Jacinto), and six months later, the high schoolers are faced with a coming wedding and life as stepsisters.

But a multi-tasking psychic (Vanessa Bayer stealing some scenes) at the bachelorette party spurs a double body swap, and when the two teens wake up in the bodies of Tess and Anna, breaking up the wedding gets a freaky bit easier.

Confusion and hijinx mount, as director Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) and writer Jordan Weiss (TV’s Dollface) can’t equal the clever plotting that drove the original. A sight gag set in the record store owned by Anna’s ex, Jake (Chad Michael Murray), does pay dividends, easily rising above the forced antics of food fights, pickleball games, and dance lessons.

But the charming chemistry between Curtis and Lohan hasn’t waned, and anyone who grew up with the first film will appreciate the fun the stars have with the effects of aging. Curtis, especially, seems to be having a ball.

Yes, the “walk a mile in my shoes” lessons are obvious and the finale is contrived, but the film isn’t really trying to do anything more than feed its target audience some warm and relatable nostalgia. And it certainly does that.

Freakier may not be better, but it still can lead to moments of silly fun.

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Last Goodbye

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It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley

by Rachel Willis

Director Amy Berg (Janis: Little Girl Blue) paints an intimate portrait of songwriter Jeff Buckley in her documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.

Berg understands her subject and skillfully weaves the story of Buckley’s life, which is bookended by tragedy.

Buckley’s mom (Mary Guibert) opens up about the tumultuous early years of Jeff’s life. With a father who abandoned his six-month pregnant wife, Buckley had no relationship with a man to whom he would draw comparison in later life.

Buckley’s biological father was singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, and as Jeff started to make a name for himself, those constant comparisons would wear on him. Berg artfully navigates these early years of Jeff’s career while he struggled to distance himself from his absentee father.

Berg weaves archival footage into the film, often using recordings of Buckley to invigorate interviews with Jeff’s friends and family. The footage helps the audience to know the person to whom everyone has such touching words.

Unfortunately, there are times when the film drags a bit as it becomes repetitive. A lot of similar ground is trod over the course of the film’s runtime, and Berg doesn’t bring anything new to the genre of music documentary.

It can also be hard to watch people talk about events in hindsight, particularly when the subject of such conversation is unable to weigh in on those opinions. There is speculation of Buckley’s mental state, perhaps that he suffered from bipolar disorder and psychosis. While this may be true, it’s difficult to judge the truth of someone’s memories 20 years on. It’s Buckley’s haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah that plays over the words of those who speak of Jeff after his death. It is undeniably an exquisite cover and a fitting tribute to a life cut tragically short.

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Bloody Yield

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Strange Harvest

by Hope Madden

Strange Harvest is an evocative title. It conjures all kinds of folk horror notions, or better still, body horror. Mysterious, right? And what better way to solve a mystery than by working with the detectives on the case?

Writer/director Stuart Ortiz’s latest horror film takes on the eerily realistic shape of a true-crime TV show. In fact, it often recalls I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the series built on Michelle McNamara’s investigation into the Golden State Killer. Tapping into the true crime phenomenon without actually delivering truth, just fiction, can be a tough go.

Luckily, Ortiz has some genuinely horrifying ideas to present. The crime scenes littered throughout the investigation are the stuff of nightmare. And though a couple feel almost Saw inspired, most are jarringly original and truly ghastly.

They suggest the work of a true sadist, and fleeting images of the killer himself—masked and unmasked—unsettle. Strange Harvest boasts an awful lot of pieces working together to get under your skin.  

Ortiz stitches this footage together with studio interviews of the investigators, Det. Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Det. Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple). Here’s where the authenticity begins to thin. Heavy-handed writing paired with, especially in Zizzo’s case, obvious performance delivers something far more staged and artificial than what the balance of the film offers.

They also leech the film of a lot of the horror and tension being built by these horrifying crime scenes. One of the few notions not pulled from McNamara’s show is the focus on the victims. That kind of human underpinning, handled so well by Anna Kendrick in her  2024 directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, might have created the empathy Ortiz seems to be trying for with the investigator interviews.

Feeling for someone—frightened for them, compassion for them—deepens the impact of any horror film. There were certainly opportunities to help us care what happened at each crime scene, but instead we’re asked to be frustrated with the investigators. That can work. Zodiac made it work, but of course that was David Fincher and we were actively investigating with the police, not privy to their trauma after the fact.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes, John Erick Dowdie’s 2007 found footage style horror, steers much closer to the road Ortiz is taking, and because we hear more from and about victims, it leaves deeper scars.

There’s a lot Strange Harvest has going for it, but Ortiz and his cast never fully deliver on the promise of the title.

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Still No Free Drinks

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Ebony and Ivory

by George Wolf

How many “very”s would it take until you were convinced that the journey a movie character had just survived was quite long?

Two? Twenty Hundred?

If you’ve seen The Greasy Strangler or An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, you know that writer/director Jim Hosking leans toward the latter. And you’re probably wondering about the possibility of free drinks.

Sorry, still no. What you will get is an even greater heap of Hosking’s absurdist world-building, one that’s hampered by limiting the madness to a collab meeting between two unnamed musical legends Unnamed? Yeah, but it’s 1981 on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, and the white one (Sky Elobar) is English and into “vegetarian ready meals” while the American (Gil Gex) is Black and blind.

Plus, the movie is titled Ebony and Ivory, so…

The idea does seem like fertile ground for the type of quotable, often brilliantly inspired silliness Hosking has become known for, but nothing really sticks. And it’s not for lack of trying many, many times to sear “shit and fuck,” “Scottish cottage” and “Doobie Woobie” into your pop culture brain. Too much of this just lands like filler set on repeat while it searches for some piece of story to grasp.

The boys do venture outside the cottage where they naturally get naked and fly their merkins in perfect harmony, but by then you’re way past longing for more members of Hosking’s lunatic fringe to join the chorus and push things forward. It’s not exactly Waiting for Godot, more like waiting for Michael St. Michaels to drop in on lead guitar. Two characters and one setting is just too constraining, as if Jim Steinman was hired to write for the Spice Girls.

Look, I’d still take it over Bohemian Rhapsody, but you won’t find much of Ebony and Ivory on any Jim Hosking’s greatest hits playlist.

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Seeing Red

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Animale

by Hope Madden

For most of cinematic history, the werewolf has been the territory of men. The Wolf Man and all that. Not always, though. Feminist classic Ginger Snaps was among the first films to see the metaphorical possibilities of a monthly curse, and plenty of films since have tossed aside the idea that the furry shapeshifter has to be a dude.

With Animale, co-writer/director Emma Benestan throws out the idea that the shape for shifting has to be a wolf.

Nejma (Oulaya Amamra) is the lone woman working a bull ranch in Camargue, France and training to bullfight. Her first fight doesn’t go as well as she’d hoped, but still she’s invited to tag along with the others for a post-fight party out in the pasture.

Nothing is quite the same after. She wakes with little memory of the night, but a bad gash from a bull attack. As she feels herself undergo changes—nightmares, acute senses, physical changes—a rogue bull seems to be targeting the ranch workers, killing them night after night.

Benestan’s talented cast favors understated realism, which sometimes feels slightly out of step with the supernatural tale being spun. But each carves out an authentic individual. Vivien Rodriguez is especially impressive, finding layers where others may not have.

Amamra mines her character for vulnerability and confidence in ways that not only feel authentic but make the transformation more believable. When another bull is targeted as the killer, the performance takes on a passion that’s charged, disturbing, and right for the film.

The scene that kicks off Act 3 is as potent and disturbing as anything in recent horror cinema memory. It cements the film’s underlying metaphor with heartbreaking relevance. This is a film about acceptable cruelty, which makes it a difficult watch, although Benestan does what she can to transport you someplace quite amazing.

Investment in metaphor over monster mythology robs the final scene of some of its potential, but not a lot. Animale sees parallels you may not want to see, but once you’ve watched it, it can’t be unseen. There’s no question that’s a good thing.

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Nothing New to See Here

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Birthrite

by Hope Madden

There’s no limit to the number of horror films that begin with a family inheriting a secluded house that’s not all they hoped it would be. How many are there? Dozens? More? In just last couple of years: Mother May I, Abandoned, The Front Room, The Visitor.

But maybe Birthrite does something different. Surely Ross Partridge’s film won’t contain a couple, one of whom believes something uncanny is unfolding while the other believes it’s all in their head.

Oh, is that the plot? Well, the important thing is that the main character does not keep saying “I’m not crazy” to allay skepticism cast because of some prior trauma or depression. Because that is pretty worn out, plot-wise.

Oh, is that the whole conflict? But characters are developed organically, correct? We’re not expected to piece it together with glimpses of prescription bottles, right?

Yikes. Please don’t tell me there’s a pregnancy.

Sigh. Is there a chance that the mystery at the center of the tale could be easily resolved with proper communication between the partners, but instead, the story involves a creepy townie (Michael Chernus), a librarian (Owen Campbell), a spooky little girl (Elsa Parent), and a lot of exposition? Because that is just lazy writing.

Damn it!

Leads Alice Kremelberg and Juani Feliz deliver committed turns, while the criminally underused Chernus and Campbell elevate the material when given the chance. Jennifer Lafleur is an imposing presence, and the film looks great, a number of scenes punctuated with creepy imagery. But it’s hard to figure out why anybody made Birhtrite, and harder still to understand why actors as talented as Chernus and Campbell contributed, considering their limited screen time and impact.

Presumably everyone involved read the script before shooting began, and that’s where the problem begins. Writers Patch Darragh and Erin Gann conjure up not a single new idea, and those borrowed thoughts they introduce they don’t follow through to any logical or even interesting conclusion. The writing is lazy, and no amount of beautifully creepy landscape, atmospheric interiors, or thoughtful performances can overcome that.

It’s not that Birthrite is terrible. There’s just nothing new to see here.

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The Call of the Wild

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Folktales

by Brandon Thomas

Roger Ebert was once quoted as saying, “No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmett Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.” I don’t have a particular actor or two for whom this rule applies, but I am a tad biased when a film features a slew of good boi doggos and Folktales has them in spades.

Folktales tells the story of Norway’s Pasvik Folk High School. This school caters to young adults in a “gap year,” teaching them survival skills in the rugged Arctic region of Northern Norway while also relying on them to help train sled dogs. The film focuses on three specific students: Hege, Romain, and Bjorn. Each of them has their emotional reason for coming to Pasvik for the year, yet despite their desire to experience something truly new, each one struggles with the baggage they carry into the wilderness.

Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have already shown their prowess in documenting young people’s journeys away from home with The Boys of Baraka and Jesus Camp. While not quite dealing with the same heavy topics as those two films, Folktales still delves into the lives of young people at a crossroads. The obvious stakes may not seem high, but to them, this year in rural Norway is a last-ditch effort to regain – or find for the first time – some sort of normalcy. 

Rarely relying on typical talking heads, Ewing and Grady instead allow the camera’s observations to do most of the talking. There’s a calm and stillness to Folktales that echoes the quiet winter air. The beauty of the film’s cinematography is matched only by the beauty of the changes the audience gets to witness in the three students. None of them leave Pasvik with their trauma and struggles behind them, but what they do gain is the notion that things can get better and that they can be the catalyst for said change. 

Did I mention the dogs? The way the film – and the school – use the dogs to unlock something within students is a thing of beauty. These gorgeous animals are there to work, and they often sense the unease and insecurity of the students. The steely blue gaze of a Siberian Husky is ominous and beautiful all at the same time – something Ewing and Grady’s camera never forgets. That mix of visual metaphor and real-life struggle of young people pays off as we see the students earn the trust of these animals and find comfort in their presence. 

Folktales doesn’t strive to stir up unnecessary drama or strife in its subjects. Instead, the film revels in the beauty found all around us as we try to recapture happiness, catharsis, and confidence.

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Drawn This Way

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The Bad Guys 2

by Hope Madden

Nothing promises irresistible fun like a heist movie. That, plus a remarkable voice cast, elevated 2022’s animated adventure The Bad Guys above its sometimes convoluted writing.

Well, those bad guys gone good—Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina)—get sucked into one more heist in The Bad Guys 2.

The team of, let’s be honest, felons is having a tough time finding work since they served their time. And these copycat crimes are only making it harder for them to be accepted back into normal life. Well, a little blackmail and suddenly it looks like maybe the bad guys turned good guys might turn bad guys for the good of the planet, or maybe just turn back guys again for good.

As delightful as the sequel is, the plot is often as cumbersome and complicated as that last sentence.

The voice cast continues to be on point, though, strengthened by additions Danielle Brooks and Natasha Lyonne, who has a voice for animation as perfect to the task as Awkwafina’s. There are sly references, including a fun Silence of the Lambs sequence, plus Colin Jost playing a guy marrying out of his league.

The kids in my screening were mostly delighted, although the sheer volume of kissing made a nearby 9-year-old audibly upset. (Three smooches, and it was the third that seemed to just be too much.) But the romantic side plots are as adorable as the film’s focus on supportive friendship is sweet. (The redistribution of wealth angle is worth a smile as well.)

The snappy visual aesthetic and mischievous energy perfectly suit this cast, and the film feels like a fun and intriguing steppingstone for a franchise or TV series. It’s smarter than it looks and goofier than it needs to be. We’re in too short a supply of both of those things, so I’m happy to report that The Bad Guys 2 delivers the goods.