Category Archives: Outtakes

Movie-related whatnot

Outtakes

Exit Light, Enter Night

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In Your Dreams

by Hope Madden

The delightfully juvenile humor that propels much of the new Dreamworks animated film In Your Dreams entertains. It also amplifies the tension between tween big sister Stevie (Jolie Hoant-Rappaport) and little brother, Elliot (Elias Janssen).

If the perfectionist eldest sibling is going to somehow get her parents to stay together, the last thing she needs is Elliot and his foul-smelling stuffed animal Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson) getting in the way.

But naturally, when Stevie makes a wish to find Sandman and make her dream of a happy family come true, somehow Elliot gets himself involved. Now Stevie can’t make her way through dreamland to find the Sandman without her pesky little brother.

In that way, In Your Dreams is sort of the Predator: Badlands of the grade school set.

Though the computer-generated animation is sometimes disappointing, the movie’s chaotic energy and humor while our heroes work toward finding the Sandman—plus a fun, splashy bit of hand drawn animation— are a blast. It’s during these dream montages that co-writers/directors Erik Benson and Alexander Woo (who write with Stanely Moore) are most inspired. It’s also where we get to spend the most time with Baloney Tony, easily the film’s funniest character.

As dreams of life among happily animated breakfast foods turn rancid under the influence of Nightmara (Gia Carides), In Your Dreams runs through a fun, funny, and often insightful set of dream sequences set to appropriate and fun needle drops.

The film’s themes are compelling and often insightfully rendered, and the storyline itself bears originality sometimes lost in family films. But once we finally reach the Sandman, the look, feel, humor and imagination seem to disappear. We build and build to Sandman, but he and his castle are bland and forgettable.

In Your Dreams never fully recovers, most of Act 3 feeling like a quick and easy escape route from the otherwise clever conceits in the plot. There are definitely laughs and fun sequences, but you may forget this one as quickly as last night’s dream.

Outtakes

Mommy Fearest

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The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

by George Wolf

Even at its most fun, 1992’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was a bit of a guilty pleasure. Hulu’s new update strips away the overdone pulp for a more focused, and more primally scary tale.

Caitlin (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is an L.A. lawyer who diligently screens her children’s food for sugars and aims to get a new stop sign for her neighborhood. Working at a tenants rights group, Caitlin helps Polly (Maika Monroe) with a landlord problem, and when the two cross paths again at a local market, fate seems to have dealt a good hand.

Polly has experience as a nanny, and she comes with a glowing recommendation from her last employer. She looks like the perfect choice to help Caitlin and her husband Miguel (Raúl Castillo) with young Emma (Mileiah Vega) and baby Josie (Nora and Lola Contreras).

Caitlin chooses poorly.

Screenwriter Micah Bloomberg (Sanctuary) updates the original story with some important twists, and director Michelle Garza Cervera sets a pace that lets the gaslighting, secrets and lies simmer nicely before boiling over.

Cervera crafted an impressive maternal nightmare three years ago with her feature debut, Husera: The Bone Woman. Here, she trades the religious imagery for symbols of upwardly mobile success, while still toying with anyone eager to check boxes of good mother/bad mother.

Winstead and Monroe are both terrific, bringing their characters into a dance of identity with menacing dread. There is more to Caitlin than her liberal guilt, and as Polly twists the knife with increasing sociopathy, Cervera’s instincts for a modern horror thriller are again solid.

Is any remake truly “necessary?” Debatable. But even back in ’92, the original film seemed like one that wouldn’t age particularly well. The questionable decisions remain, and one or two story beats are foreshadowed too heavily, but by the time all secrets are revealed, this Cradle rocks with some newly relevant bloodletting.

Outtakes

Downbound Train

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Barcelona Underground

by Hope Madden

Subways can be very scary places. An American Werewolf in London knew it. Del Toro’s Mimic. Midnight Meat Train. Jacob’s Ladder. A Quiet Place: Day One. These films amplified the claustrophobic subterranean atmosphere for all its hellscape potential.

Luis Prieto’s Barcelona Underground (also variously called Last Stop: Rocafort St. and Rocafort Station) tries to tap into that mass transit terror. Laura (Natalia Azahara) has a new job manning the Rocafort stop on Barcelona’s subway system, which is legendary for its suicides. Three of every four subway suicides in the city take place at the Rocafort Street stop.

It all started back when Román (Javier Gutiérrez) was still a cop. He followed serial killer Elías Soro through the labyrinthine tunnels but wasn’t quick enough to save the family of four Soro had taken hostage.

Were they suicides? They were not. How is this connected to the suicides? And why is Laura haunted by hallucinations ever since she witnessed one? Who knows, honestly? I sat through the whole movie and feel confident in saying that Prieto never truly connects the folklore, exorcism, and police procedural threads to even begin to make sense of this plot.

Worse, he doesn’t capitalize on the horrific possibilities available in a subway tunnel.

Barcelona Underground is a hodgepodge of obvious cliches and worn-out tropes slapped together with nonsensical panache. Each piece is incredibly familiar, but not one fits snugly in place beside the next piece. It’s as if Prieto, writing with Ivan Ledesma and Ángel Agudo, lifted the most cliched scene from a dozen films and taped them together, hoping to create a single tale.

None of it works because none of it makes sense. Both Azahara and Gutiérrez do what they can with poorly written roles, but the senseless mishmash of a story arc keeps either from crafting a recognizable character.

Plus, it’s not scary.  

An American Werewolf in London is scary, though. Do with that information what you will.

Outtakes

Slim, Sick and Sorry Looking

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Coyotes

by Hope Madden

Colin Minihan’s a fun filmmaker. Not everything hits, but nothing ever entirely misses. His latest, the horror comedy with heart Coyotes, is one of his more pleasant, less memorable efforts.

Justin Long is a comic book writing dad living in the Hollywood Hills. His wife (real life wife Kate Bosworth), daughter (Mila Harris), and schnauzer Charlie life comfortably enough but they think they hear rats in their walls.

Rats won’t be their biggest problem once a pack of bloodthirsty coyotes stands between Long’s family and escape from the raging wildfire the neighbor inadvertently set after coyotes gnawed through his carcass.

Trip (Norbert Leo Butz), the neighbor, and his girlfriend-for-hire (Brittany Allen, frequent Minihan collaborator) balance the neighbor family’s earnestness with bawdy, slapstick humor. Allen’s comic sensibility is especially strong, her presence creating a consistent sense of random humor that elevates everything.

Allen’s wrongheadedness bounces beautifully off Long’s likeable dufus, leaving Bosworth the somewhat thankless straight man role. But she carries it with the right balance of dignity and impatience to give the character flavor.

The chemistry among the actors goes a long way to strengthen a slight script. The character motivations we’re told about don’t match the footage we see, and coyotes come and go with little rational explanation.

As for horror, nearly every death, even nearly every attack, is off screen. Reaction shots fill in for carnage, each intended more for a laugh than a scare. But there just aren’t that many outright laughs.

Still, it’s hard not to root for Justin Long to survive a horror movie. Here, he’s at his most likeable and goofy, plus he’s rightfully preoccupied with keeping Charlie from coyote clutches. Because screw the neighbors, protect that dog!

Coyotes is not one of Minihan’s strongest, and it certainly doesn’t measure up to Long’s better genre titles. The writing can’t measure up in logic, fun, humor or horror to what the cast deserves. But it’s a pleasant enough waste of time for horror fans.

Outtakes

The Long Goodbye

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Another End

by Adam Barney

“Grief is the price we pay for love” – Queen Elizabeth II.

It’s probably the cynic in me, but it’s not hard for me to believe that companies will find a way to monetize our grief processing in the near future. It feels like it is practically upon us that an AI program will gobble up e-mails and text messages and then communicate with us as a construct of our deceased loved one. The grieving will get the chance to hang on a little longer to that person or say something that they didn’t get a chance to say during their life. But is this doing any good for the bereaved?

This is the primary issue that writer/director Piero Messina explores in Another End. With a wave-of-the-hand science explanation, a deceased’s memories can be loaded into a volunteer “host”, and they will spend a few sessions with the bereaved. The host transitions back and forth between themselves and the deceased when they go to sleep. This process can’t last forever, so you must be prepared to say goodbye again.

Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, The Science of Sleep) plays Sal, a widowed husband who blames himself for the car crash that killed his wife. His sister Ebe (Berenice Bejo, The Artist) is worried that Sal won’t fully recover from his grief and she just so happens to work for the company that provides the host experience described above. After convincing Sal to try the program, his wife’s memories are downloaded into Ava (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World, A Different Man), who begins to visit Sal as his deceased wife Zoe. Sal is curious about the host, so he starts to follow Ava in her real life so that he can get to know her too.

Another End is melancholic. From the score to the performances, there is a sterile iciness that permeates every inch of this film. We don’t get to experience any of the happier times; we just dwell with the characters in the pit of their loss.

Bernal wears haunted well and Reinsve does an excellent job in the dual roles of Ava and Zoe. Black Mirror, for better or worse, has conditioned us to have certain expectations with a story like this. All the expected twists and turns play out as you will have likely guessed from the beginning and nothing profound is offered before the credits roll. An advantage to the Black Mirror stories is that they are handled in about an hour, which makes Another End feel quite bloated with its two-hour runtime.

Outtakes

Scrolling in the Deep

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Swiped

by George Wolf

2012, what a time to be young and upwardly mobile. Barack Obama was re-elected, “Gangnam Style” seemed to burst from every speaker, and Facebook’s IPO made social media technology the new capitalist battleground.

But when we first meet a young Whitney Wolfe – the future founder of Bumble – she’s a whip-smart, idealistic young woman looking for a tech startup that would easily connect volunteers to orphanages in need. Hulu’s Swiped presents her shift into dating apps as a dizzying, formulaic ride through ambition, greed, traumatic harassment and well-earned triumph.

Lily James is perfect in the lead. Wolfe’s seduction by the rush of the tech boom, and by her quick rise up the ladder at the firm launching Twitter, seems authentic. Whitney is well aware of how male-dominated the tech industry is, and when she initially puts aside some micro aggressions for a continued belief in CEO Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), James gives Whitney enough layers to craft a sympathetic internal conflict.

Director and co-writer Rachel Lee Goldenberg (Unpregnant, 2020’s Valley Girl) strikes a tone and pace that can feel rushed among the recognizable time stamp. These online rules “were written by men,” and Twitter’s explosion at the Winter Olympics ushers in the era of toxic behavior and dick pics. Wolfe’s subsequent push for some app safeguards at the same time her relationship with a fellow Tinder founder (Jackson White) is crumbling makes her a target.

The abuse gets intense, and sexual harassment charges follow.

An NDA eventually signed by Wolfe (now Wolfe-Herd) meant she couldn’t directly consult on the film – and Goldenberg makes it clear she did indeed take creative license – but Swiped paints an effective big picture. Could it have dug deeper? Most definitely, but you never get the feeling that it wants to explore any of the larger “social commodity” issues confronted by Celine Song’s Materialists from earlier this year, or the intricate empire building of 2010’s seminal The Social Network.

The aim here is an entertaining streamer, one that will engage with energy and polish while it introduces you to a hero from the tech wars that you may not know. And though you really won’t know her after watching Swiped, you’ll get a version of her story that’s always watchable, just never a match for memorable social commentary.

Outtakes

In and Out

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Just Breathe

by Brooklyn Ewing

Given the chance to see actor Kyle Gallner in a movie, I will always flock to it. Gallner’s ability to make someone fall in and out of love with a character is something special. In Just Breathe, he brings his A game.

Directed by newcomer Paul Pompa III, Just Breathe offers up a game of cat and mouse that keeps you guessing, and yelling at the screen. 

After serving a year in jail for assault, Nick Bianco (Gallner) sets out to reunite with the love of his life, Mel (Amyri Crutchfield). He discovers that she has a new admirer named Chester (Shawn Ashmore), who also happens to be Nick’s parole officer, setting off his anger issues all over again.

Just Breathe sees William Forsythe’s return to the screen as Tony, Nick’s deadbeat dad. Forsythe brings so much life to this rough and tumble character. I loved to hate him. 

Gallner and Crutchfield are great together, and watching them makeup and breakup keeps you praying their relationship can survive Chester’s romantic, and offbeat, advances. 

Fans of traditional Lifetime movies will love this one, and it has the polish to hit the big screen. The acting is the star of this thriller, and I’m excited for folks to see it so we can all talk about how much we hate Chester together. 

Just Breathe is another Kyle Gallner classic to add to the collection. Make sure to give it a watch. 

Outtakes

Scenes from the Opioid Epidemic

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What We Hide

by Hope Madden

At 19, Mckenna Grace has racked up 71 TV and film acting credits, with 11 more movies currently in post-production. That’s insane. Naturally not every project was a winner. But from her earliest film work, like Marc Webb’s 2017 drama Gifted, Grace’s control and authenticity make her memorable, even when the projects are not.

Writer/director Dan Kay’s streamer What We Hide benefits immeasurably from Grace’s presence. She plays Spider, 15-year-old daughter of an addict. With her younger sister Jessie (Jojo Regina), Spider discovers the overdosed corpse of her mother in the opening moments of the film.

Recognizing that foster care would almost certainly mean splitting her from her sister, Spider decides to hide the body and say nothing. Now all the girls have to do is steer clear of their mom’s volatile dealer (Dacre Montgomery), the town’s goodhearted sheriff (Jesse Williams), and the latest case worker, whom they not-so-affectionately call “Baby Thief” (Tamara Austin).

Grace is terrific, and the chemistry she shares with Regina buoys some otherwise clunky dialog. The cast around them does admirable work with even more obvious characters. The always welcome Forrest Goodluck (Revenant, Blood Quantum, How to Blow Up a Pipeline) carries love interest Cody with a naturalism that gives his scenes an indie vibe that comes close to offsetting the after school special tenor delivered by the rest of the effort.

Commendable performances from a solid cast don’t make up for Kay’s uninspired direction. Bland framing marries banal plotting to leech some of the vibrance this cast injects into scenes.

It doesn’t help that the story veers so rarely from the obvious that the occasional flash of originality—the couple from the motel, the case worker’s phone calls—stand out as opportunities left unexplored.

Had Kay been able to situate his tale from the opioid epidemic in a recognizable place, given the community some personality, or found a less by-the-book way to complicate What We Hide, he might have had something. Instead, the film is a well-intentioned waste of a good cast.

Outtakes

High in the Middle

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Eenie Meanie

by Hope Madden

Remember how great Cleveland looked in Superman? Writer/director Shawn Simmons takes us back to The Land, as well as to Toledo, for his thriller set among Ohio’s low rent criminal underbelly, Eenie Meanie.

It’s not exactly as tourism friendly as Superman.

Samara Weaving is Edie, and when we meet her, she’s really struggling to make something of her life. A day job as a bank clerk, night classes, maxed out credit cards, bleary nights studying. And then her one mistake—she stops by to share some news with her ex, John (Karl Glusman, The Bikeriders, Watcher).

But John’s gotten himself into some trouble. And try as she might to leave him and his trouble behind, the semi-fatherly crime lord she used to work for (Andy Garcia, delightful) will kill John unless Edie saves him. And to do that, she falls back on some old skills as a getaway driver in a big score.

Simmons has crafted a fun, twisty, funny thriller full of sharp turns. Weaving effortlessly carries the film as the tenderhearted badass who knows better. Glusman is infuriatingly excellent as that epic dumbass you want to smack but can’t help but hug. And maybe also smack.

Solid support from Garcia, Steve Zahn, Mike O’Malley, and Randall Park fills every scene with laughs, pathos, violence, and fun. But it’s the sly way Simmons braids together tales of co-dependence, trauma, loyalty, and resilience that gives Eenie Meanie unexpected heft.

Weaving has proven her genre moxie again and again (Ready or Not, Mayhem, The Babysitter, Guns Akimbo, Azrael), so it comes as no surprise that she brings the goods as the lead in an action comedy thriller. What’s impressive is the honesty and the genuine emotional conflict she expresses within this relationship.

She and Glusman revel in the dysfunction, played for exasperated laughs in the early going. But as Simmons tale develops, unveiling more of their relationship and backstory, that same chemistry takes on a relevance and power that allows Eenie Meanie to deliver a climax more powerful than you might expect.

Outtakes

Bagheads

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We’re Not Safe Here

by Hope Madden

The nightmarish images and unsettling sound design of writer/director Solomon Gray’s We’re Not Safe Here more than make up for its narrative stumbles.

A lot of films open on a scene of horror to be contextualized later in the movie. Likewise, Solomon sets the stage early with a swift, troubling little gem of a horror show. But interestingly, the tale he builds around it taps into a terror more subconscious and dreamlike than what you might expect.

Sharmita Bhattacharya is Neeta, a schoolteacher by day/artist by night who’s been unable to get started on her latest painting. Frustrated at the easel one night, she’s surprised by a visit from Rachel (Hayley McFarland), another teacher who’s been missing. Frantic and increasingly panicked, Rachel spills a story that began in her childhood. Something she thought she’d lost has found her again.

Aside from some very intimidating figures wearing bloody pillowcases over their heads (creepy!), We’re Not Safe Here is primarily a two-person show. McFarland is masterful, her paranoid madness tipped with a teacher’s command of the room. She’s mesmerizing.

Bhattacharya struggles a bit. Neeta is also troubled, and the performance feels stiff and unsure until the character gives into her demons. But there are moments between the two of them that are deeply upsetting. I mean that in a good way.

Gray’s use of setting—Neeta’s home, every wall cluttered with her sketches and paintings, every surface littered with books—creates a busy, fascinating space rich with potentially spookiness. A meandering camera and effective sound design capitalizes on what the set design has crafted: a lovingly lived-in space turned suddenly suspicious. The filmmaker evokes a kind of paranoia that feeds the perfect atmosphere for his film.

There’s a looseness to the script that often serves the film’s maniacal undercurrent. What’s delusion? What’s really happening? And is it contagious?

Gray refuses to fit all the pieces together, a choice that mostly pays off. The act structure and finale are rigid enough to give the tale a feel of completion. While a lingering vagueness in the backstory is frustrating, it also allows the imagination to veer into its own halls of madness.