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Bless Your Heart

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The Nice Ones

by Rachel Willis

Following a recent psychiatric stay, Kate (Joelle Rae) isn’t very excited to reconnect with her friend group in writer/director Peter Sylianou’s film, The Nice Ones.

It’s easy to see why. None of Kate’s friends are very sensitive to her recent plight. They talk behind her back, share the viral video of her breakdown, and are downright obnoxious. Though I do have to give props to newcomer Jade (Daniela Norman) for calling out the inappropriateness of Kate dating her former therapist.

We don’t have to squirm long with Kate accepting her “friends’” bad behavior, as she is soon certain her closest friend Shelly (Ayvianna Snow) isn’t herself. Boyfriend Dale (Emrhys Cooper) is quick to name Kate’s psychosis, trying to reassure the group that they just need to be patient with her.

It might seem obvious where this is going, but Sylianou isn’t interested in questioning Kate’s sanity. Instead, other characters quickly cotton to the fact that Kate might be on to something.

Unfortunately, throughout the film, the stakes are low. Not only do we never get to know Kate, but it’s impossible to sympathize with most of her friends, so whether they are themselves or not never feels like that big of a deal. Dale spends most of his time gaslighting everyone, so even he becomes expendable in the viewer’s mind.

The film tries to tackle several issues—relationship dynamics, mental health, etc.—but it never settles on any kind of broader commentary. If there is a larger allegory buried in the film’s plot, it’s hard to tease out.

With unlikable characters and little to say, The Nice Ones doesn’t have much going for it.

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Harbor Frights

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Hope

by Hope Madden

When I learned that Na Hong-jin, the filmmaker behind 2016’s The Wailing and 2008’s The Chaser, was releasing a creature feature this year called Hope, well, I was as on board as a person can be.

The writer/director has an instinct for dumbass heroes, beleaguered and in-over-their-heads, and mysteries that are too big for them to solve. His shot making is breathtaking, often finding an almost obscene beauty in the most disturbing of images. And the humor in his films is so inappropriate given the gravity of the subject that it can’t help but be appealing.

And now a creature feature? We haven’t had a great Korean creature feature since Bong Joon Ho’s 2006 masterpiece The Host. Two decades! And for the first hour or so, Hope delivers a breakneck and breathless bit of horror.

Hwang Jung-min is the police chief of Hope Harbor, a tiny South Korean harbor town in the demilitarized zone just this side of North Korea. Chief carries himself with a little swagger, wears fancy Western boots and shades, and has no idea what to do when some hunters report an ox that looks to have been ripped apart by a tiger.

From that moment of revelation, what Na crafts is the most precise and astonishing chaos. The movement of the camera, what we see and what we do not, what we hear without seeing, the scale and the intimacy and the carnage is magnificent. Unheard of. Deeply amazing.

And within that pandemonium, characters emerge. They are funny, cowardly, fearless, dim-witted—sometimes all of those adjectives at different moments. The chemistry among castmates is fresh and electric, but you know you’re waiting for something more. Depth, a backstory, a twist. You know it’s coming.

With the first good look at the beast, the wheels begin to come off this joy ride. And as Na lets you take a breath between acts, complications pile up, genres switch up, and CGI continues to disappoint.

The actors never do. Zo In-sung is a force of nature in this film, and Hoyeon oscillates between sweetheart and badass depending on the needs of the scene. But their film, this breathtaking creature feature, feels like it’s bled into an entirely other movie. One more ponderous and pretentious and weighed down with CGI.

Hope is an impressive piece of filmmaking no matter its end result, but it’s fully an hour too long and that hour belongs to some separate, other movie, which keeps the movie I loved so much from a satisfying conclusion.

 

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Politics at the Dinner Table

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My Father’s Shadow

by Rachel Willis

Nigerian brothers Akin and Remi (Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, respectively) are playing in nearby fields when they unexpectedly encounter their father (Sope Dirisu), home briefly from Lagos. The younger boy, Akin, begs their father to stay. Instead, Folarin takes his sons with him back to Lagos in director Akinola Davies Jr.’s film, My Father’s Shadow.

What follows is one day in Lagos with Akin and Remi around the time of Nigeria’s infamous 1993 presidential election.

The boys are our eyes and ears into their father’s world, a world separate from the life they lead with their mother at home. From their father’s interactions with friends and colleagues, Folarin’s great personal investment in the election and the democratization of his country is made clear.

Davies also shows us the chaos of the city around them. Fuel shortages cause vehicles to run out of gas in the streets. People stand outside petrol stations, waiting and hoping to get gas. We learn that Folarin’s situation at work is far from ideal, and the time he spends away from his family trying to bring home more money feels futile.

Anyone who knows Nigeria’s history may know that while the candidate from the Social Democratic Party (Moshood Abiola) won the election—an election declared free and fair by several independent observers— the military regime led by President Ibrahim Babangida cited claims of vote buying. The presidential election was therefore annulled in a televised announcement.

Folarin and his sons are sitting in a café eating dinner when the announcement is made. The people in the café erupt in disbelief and anger, frightening and confusing the boys. As Folarin reacts with anguished rage, a friend pleads with him to flee the city. Davis intersperses archival footage into the narrative, heightening tensions in the film’s final moments.

Davies’s film is touching during the events of the day Folarin spends with his sons, and he gives us enough information to understand what hinges on the election. Still, the truly impactful moments are when the family is attempting to get out of Lagos.

However immediately relevant the storyline seems, the overall message of the film is not political. Instead, it focuses on the importance of family, and the choices we make for them, especially in times of upheaval. It’s something that resonates beyond a single moment in time.

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Killer Pictures

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Maybe you know about Hope’s latest novel, Killer Pictures (get yourself an autographed copy right here in our store!)

It tells the story of Dez, who should go to bed, but instead, she keeps watching horror movies for the Mayhem & Madness Film Festival. She sees a new one pop up in her to-review queue: Adam. That’s a funny title, she thinks, since there’s another judge named Adam. But instead of watching, she goes to bed, and by the time she wakes up, the judge named Adam has killed his wife and himself, and the film Adam has disappeared from the judging queue.

In its place is a film called Grant — the name of another judge. Is Grant doomed to Adam’s fate? Will Dez see her own name as a film title? If she does, will she dare watch it?

Welcome to the Mayhem & Madness film festival, where the judges are committed and the pictures are killer.

Intrigued? Well, treat yourself to our new short film, Killer Pictures, to watch as Dez falls into a mystery that may end her life.

Behind the Scenes!

Whole gang!
Cat McAlpine as Dez
Brooklyn Ewing captures Blythe and Jason
Tyrone Russell films Krista Lively Stauffer with Jerry Larew and Hope Madden
George directs the scene

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For Better, for Worse

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Anniversary

by Hope Madden

Jan Komasa’s political thriller Anniversary certainly boasts an impressive cast. Diane Lane leads the film as Ellen Taylor, a Georgetown professor celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary to renowned DC chef, Paul (Kyle Chandler).

Their four children will be there: high schooler Birdie (Mckenna Grace), famous comic Anna (Madeline Brewer), environmental lawyer Cynthia (Zoey Deutch) and her husband (Daryl McCormack), and beloved son who never made much of himself, Josh (Dylan O’Brien). Plus, Josh brought new girlfriend, Liz (Phoebe Dynevor). That one can’t be trusted.

Komasa crafts a “they have it all” opening to prepare us for the inevitable downfall. Ellen and Paul truly love each other, and their bickering kids love them and each other as well. But there’s an invasive species at their garden party, and no matter how strong Ellen believes her family to be, bad stuff is coming.

To the film’s credit, Lori Rosene-Gambino’s script is no pulpy thriller about a vixen corrupting a family. True to the filmmaker’s previous output (Corpus Cristi, Suicide Room), Anniversary dives into the large scale and intimate damage one persuasive but errant prophet can do.

Liz has a belief system encapsulated in her new book, “The Change.” It advocates that the people, passionate and unified, step beyond this broken democracy and create a single party that will redefine the country’s future. What transpires between Ellen and Paul’s 25th and 30th anniversary parties is a debilitatingly likely image of America’s near future.

The ensemble works wonders with slightly written characters. Komasa and Rosene-Gambino outline the insidious evolution with clarity, but the tale is too superficial to mean much. It’s a very talky script, yet very few questions are answered. Anniversary is entirely vague on the actual philosophy of “The Change”, making it tough know what people cling to and what the Taylors reject.

Worse, character arcs exist exclusively to further the plot. Deutch bears the worst of this, but everything in the film—especially the character development—is tell, don’t show. Aside from O’Brien’s, no arc is character driven. Each is plot driven and some are absurd.

Dynevor fares best, carving out a memorable, broken antagonist, a delicate survivor not to be trusted. She and Lane are formidable as antagonist and protagonist, but Anniversary doesn’t know exactly what to do with them.

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Always Been in Meat

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Chain Reactions

by Hope Madden

Not everyone believes Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a masterpiece of American filmmaking. I find those people suspicious. Luckily, those are not the people filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe (Memory: The Origins of Alien, 78/52) talks to for his latest documentary, Chain Reactions.

The film is a celebration of 50 years of TCM. The celebrants are five of the film’s biggest fans: Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama. It’s a good group. Each share intimate and individual reminiscences and theories about the film, its impact on them as artists, and its relevance as a piece of American cinema. What their ruminations have in common is just as fascinating as the ways in which their thoughts differ.

Heller-Nicholas, an Australian film critic and writer, creates a fascinating connection between Hooper’s sunbaked tale of a cannibal family with desert-set Aussie horrors like Wake in Fright and Wolf Creek. Meanwhile, Kusama sees the story as profoundly, almost poignantly American.

And Miike, genre master responsible for some of the most magnificent and difficult films horror has to offer, including Ichi the Killer and Audition, credits The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with inspiring him to become a filmmaker. And all because a Charlie Chaplin retrospective was sold out!

Philippe’s approach is that of a fan and an investigator. When Oswalt compares Hooper scenes to those from silent horror classics, Philippe split screens the images for our consideration. When Kusama digs into the importance of the color red, Chain Reactions shows us. We feel the macabre comedy, the verité horror, the beauty and the grotesque.

It’s fascinating what the different speakers have in common. So many talk about Leatherface, worry about him, pointing out that from Leatherface’s perspective, TCM is a home invasion movie.

What you can’t escape is the film’s influence and its craft. The set design should be studied. Hooper’s use of color, his preoccupation with the sun and the moon, the way he juxtaposes images of genuine beauty with the grimmest sights imaginable.

Each of these artists came to the film from a different perspective—some having seen it early enough in their youth to have been left scarred, others having taken it in as adults and still being left scarred. But each one sees layers and importance—poetry, even—in Hooper’s slice of savage cinema.

Chain Reactions is an absolute treasure of a film for fans of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

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Ain’t Got No Swing

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London Calling

by Rachel Willis

Charming isn’t usually the first word to spring to mind when describing a movie about a down-on-his-luck hitman. However, that’s the word that comes up when thinking about director Allan Ungar’s film, London Calling.

Tommy Ward (Josh Duhamel) flees London for sunny Los Angeles after a hit goes terribly wrong. He finds similar work with a new employer, Benson (Rick Hoffman). Somehow, Ward also finds himself the unlikely caretaker of Benson’s son, Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor, It). Tasked with turning Julian into a man, Ward takes him along on a series of hits. 

London Calling is suffused with humor, from the opening scenes through several bloody shootouts. Throw in Julian’s interest in LARP-ing and a penchant for Furry porn, and London Calling delivers the right mix for a solidly funny movie. 

Ungar’s script, co-written with Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe, is very predictable, but Duhamel and Taylor’s chemistry keeps it fun. Their pairing is delightful. Duhamel plays to his strengths as a hitman who could clearly use a pair of glasses but refuses them. Taylor is believable both as a crime lord’s son (with a certain ambivalence toward violence), as well as a LARP-obsessed kid.

The film falters during its climax. Too many threads come together in unsatisfying ways. Worse still, London Calling loses its sense of humor and veers too close to melodrama. 

Thankfully, it’s a brief misstep, and the overall effect is a solidly funny, enjoyable film about two charismatic outcasts.

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We Infected a Zoo

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Night of the Zoopocalypse

by Rachel Willis

Young wolf Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis) is put to the test in directors Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro’s Night of the Zoopocalypse.

Gracie’s elder pack leader is insistent that something bad is coming, making the pack run drills and practice maneuvers in preparation. But Gracie is skeptical that anything will ever happen at their zoo. Of course, she quickly learns better once an asteroid crashes nearby.

Thrown together with a mountain lion (David Harbour), an ostrich, and a wily lemur with knowledge of late-night horror movie tropes, Gracie must figure out how to defeat the sudden threat.

The animation is not especially creative, but some creepy creatures help liven things up. Some of the monsters may be a bit scary for young viewers, but older kids might be delighted to see fluffy bunnies turn into sharp-toothed, voracious beasts.

The action kicks off quickly, making it tough to catch the names of all the animals who help Gracie, but also helping to move the film forward.

The ancillary characters tend to be the most interesting and the funniest parts of the film. Because the rapport between Gracie and Dan takes a while to manifest, when the focus shifts to them, the film is less fun.

Night of the Zoopocalypse references classic and contemporary horror, from The Thing to Stranger Things, and while kids might not catch every Easter egg, adults enjoy trying to identify the various influences.

But it’s not quite enough to make the film worth the 90 minute investment. With so many excellent animated films these days, Night of the Zoopocalypse is easy to overlook.