You’ve seen those close-ups on a movie character pouring out their feelings, right? The ones where the camera pulls back to reveal that the person being spoken to has fallen asleep and missed every word?
If that’s still funny to you, 80 for Brady will deliver some laughs. If not, there’s at least the charm of seeing four legendary ladies coming together for some big screen hi-jinx.
Inspired by the real-life “Over 80 for Brady” fan club, the film follows elderly besties off to see Tom Brady and the New England Patriots take on the Atlanta Falcons back in Super Bowl 51.
Maura (Rita Moreno) is a widow living in a senior center. Betty (Sally Field) is “only 75” and a former M.I.T mathematician, Lou (Lily Tomlin) is a cancer survivor and Trish (Jane Fonda) is a divorcee who writes erotic Rob Gronkowski fan fiction (on one book cover: “football all isn’t the only game of inches!”)
But when Lou gets a new message to call her doctor, she calls an audible instead. Fearing this might be her last chance to see Brady win a title, Lou springs for four Super Bowl tickets, and the gang heads off to Houston.
Thankfully, the film centers on their time actually at the big game. But while this isn’t technically a road movie, writers Emily Halpern and Sarah Jenkins fill it with all the same type of very loosely connected skits that often make that genre so tiresome.
Betty enters a spicy wing-eating contest. Lou throws a football for prizes. They all get invited to a pre-game bash and accidentally take drugs. They get in the coach’s box. And of course there is a dance number. Even the promising cameos from Rob Corddry and Alex Moffat, as a pair of Masshole superfans with a call-in show, come up empty.
It’s all such lazy, old-fish-in-younger-waters humor that’s only mildly amusing at best, which is surprising considering Halpern and Jenkins penned the sly and very funny Booksmartin 2019. They are done no favors by the sitcom-ready treatment from first-time feature director Kyle Marvin, with artificial stadium segments rendered all the more amateurish next to the bounty of actual game film provided by the NFL.
Isn’t it just great to see these icons together, though, in anything? Sure it is, and by the time Brady himself (also a producer here) makes an appearance that manages a nod to his own mother’s cancer battle, you can’t deny the warm fuzzy footballs taking flight.
But as a comedy worthy of this Hall of Fame starting lineup, 80 for Brady feels like a personal foul.
“What can we do that we are not already doing? Do we have a duty, a responsibility as individuals, to do something? Anything? And how do we know what to do?”
These words from Jan Karski, reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness, transcend the specific horrors Karski struggled with. They mean as much today as they did decades ago, and that’s just one reason Derek Goldman and Jeff Hutchens’s film Remember This strikes such a chord.
The other reason is David Strathairn. In a stirring performance, Strathairn brings Karski to life and he does it essentially on his own. Remember This is a one-man-show, a filmed stage play written by Goldman and colleague Clark Young, but co-directed by longtime cinematographer Hutchens (who also serves as DP). The combination brings a cinematic quality to the intimacy of the stage. But again, all of this is just support work, helping Strathairn compel your undivided, often teary attention for the full runtime.
The writing here is crisp and urgent and Strathairn delivers it beautifully. There’s nothing showy in his performance, and the unassuming delivery often lands harder than it would have with more drama.
Remembering attending mass and doing as his mother told him as a boy, “I was a good boy.” Recalling his pride to serve Poland and his befuddlement at the blitzkrieg: “Poland lost the war in 20 minutes.”
The poignant understatement serves an important purpose, because there’s no hint of exaggeration or drama or self-indulgence as the actor shares Karski’s recollections of the war, of the death camp, of his inability to persuade the leaders of the Allied forces that their immediate intervention was the only thing standing between Polish Jews and complete annihilation.
“Governments have no soul.”
Hutchens’s camera is subtle but its fluidity in orchestration with lighting, Roc Lee’s sound design, and Strathairn’s movement keep the film from ever feeling stagnant or stage bound. The final result is surprisingly unsentimental, Lee’s subtle score never overwhelming the delicate performance.
Strathairn talks, a broken figure filmed in stark, lovely black and white, and we learn what apathy and inaction can cause. It’s a heartbreaking lesson worth remembering.
“My faith tells me that the second original sin has been committed by humanity through commission or omission or self-imposed ignorance or insensitivity, self-interest, hypocrisy, heartless rationalization, or outright denial. This sin will haunt humanity to the end of time. It haunts me now. And I want it to be so.”
By now, we’ve moved past the “it’s nice to see longtime supporting player Frank Grillo in the lead” phase, haven’t we? He’s established himself as a charismatic actor more than capable of carrying a film.
And while he’s still a reliably galvanizing presence in Little Dixie, the movie itself struggles to carve out its own identity as it vacillates between a generic crime narrative and some seedy sexual underbellies.
Grillo stars as Doc, a no-nonsense intermediary between Texas Gov. Richard Jeffs (Eric Dane) and a ruthless Mexican cartel run by Lalo Prado (Maurice Compte). But when the Gov. goes rogue and ignores the truce that Doc has brokered, Lalo’s bloodthirsty brother Cuco (Beau Knapp) crosses the border looking for payback – and his search starts with Doc’s daughter (Sofia Bryant).
So yes, expect plenty of “If you touch her I swear to God I’ll….,” but also writer/director John Swab’s penchant for hard turns.
This time Swab goes searching for subversion inside a Sicario-like setup, an approach similar to how he attacked truck stop horror in the recent Candy Land. But while that film managed to uncover something surprisingly human amid all the brutality, the persistent posturing and lurid details in Little Dixie do little to raise the resonance of characters or choices – and in at least one instance end up bordering on blood-soaked parody.
But the attempt to firebomb expectations almost works, more evidence that Swab may just need a little more seasoning to find his uniquely compelling voice. Until then, Little Dixie stands as a cluster of eyebrow-raising campaign promises drowned out by a standard stump speech.
Back in 2001, Brad Anderson scared the living shit out of us with the ingenious institutional horror, Session 9. He followed this up with the utterly remarkable The Machinist, and a few years later, the mind-bending thriller, Transsiberian.
Things began to peter out for Anderson as a filmmaker by 2010’s Vanishing on 7th Street, and as he found more success with episodic programming, he more or less stayed there, popping over to film every few years with routinely middling results.
Such is the case with his latest, the supernatural family drama, Blood.
Michelle Monaghan is Jess, a recently sober, recently divorced, harried nurse settling her pre-teen children into their new home, an isolated farmhouse owned by her aunt before she passed. But Pippin, the golden lab, knows something’s wrong out in them woods.
Whatever’s out there ends up in Pippin and then, shortly, in Jess’s 8-year-old, Owen (Finlay Wojtak-Hissong). The obvious tension is amplified by the fact that Jess is desperately afraid to lose custody of her children, so she is loath to admit there’s anything seriously wrong. But things are seriously, seriously wrong with Owen.
Writer Will Honley hits on a topic that was really popular in the genre maybe five years ago (The Hole, The Prodigy, Brahms: The Boy 2, Z, Brightburn).His updates actually recall slightly older films – Grace (2009), It’s Alive (the 2009 remake), even 1990’s nutty Baby Blood to a degree. What Blood is saying is not original at all, so to make it relevant, Anderson will need to mine Honley’s script for some real relevance.
The family dysfunction and addiction angle could be it. There’s an undercooked metaphor here concerning addiction and heredity. Owen’s bratty behavior buoys the film’s darker qualities, and that business down the basement is especially gruesome (as “down the basement business” so often is). But none of it pans out. In fact, some of it – the least forgettable bits – are forgotten entirely as the film delivers a kind of final grace that is wildly unearned.
Had that moral ambiguity felt intentional the film would have been at least provocative. The fact that it does not is alarming, but not in a way that makes the film more enjoyable.
All the performances are solid. Monaghan and June B. Wilde spar beautifully with each other. Meanwhile, Skeet Ulrich (nice to see you!) and young Skylar Morgan Jones fill out the problematic family well. They just won’t help you remember the movie.
You check in. You assume the best. You’d never think, as you doze off in total helplessness, that maybe the last guest is still lingering in spirit, or was fed to gators, or that the hotel itself may be the doorway to hell.
In all likelihood the worst thing you’ll bring home with you is bedbugs, but I’ll take the gators.
For this episode we’re joined by our dear friend Jamie Ray from the Fave Five from Fans podcast and, at his behest, we will run through horror cinema’s best – or worst? – hotels.
Listed below are our five favorites, but honorable mentions go to Eaten Alive‘s Starlite Hotel, Basket Case‘s Hotel Broslin, Hotel Quickie from Killer Condoms and Slausen’s Oasis from Tourist Trap.
5. Motel Hello (Motel Hell, 1980)
It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters, so swingers looking for a cheap motel in which to swing – be warned! Fifties heartthrob Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, who, along with his sister Ida (a super creepy Nancy Parsons) rid the world of human filth while serving the righteous some tasty viddles. Just don’t look under those wiggling, gurgling sacks out behind the butcherin’ barn!
Motel Hell is a deeply disturbed, inspired little low budget jewel. A dark comedy, the film nonetheless offers some unsettling images, not to mention sounds. Sure, less admiring eyes may see only that super-cheese director Kevin Connor teamed up with Parsons and Calhoun – as well as Elaine Joyce and John Ratzenberger – for a quick buck. But in reality, they teamed up to create one of the best bad horror films ever made.
4. White Lovers’ Inn (The Happiness of the Katakuris, 2001)
Guests rarely come and a strange fate awaits them.
Takashi Miike is an extremely prolific director. He makes a lot of musical films, a lot of kids’ movies, a lot of horror movies, and then this – a mashup of all of those things. Like Sound of Music with a tremendous body count.
The Katakuris just want to run a rustic mountain inn. They’re not murderers. They’re lovely – well, they’re losers, but they’re not bad people. Buying this piece of property did nothing to correct their luck, either because, my God, their guests do die.
You might call this a dark comedy if it weren’t so very brightly lit. It’s absurd, farcical, gruesome but sweet. There’s a lot of singing, some animation, a volcano, a bit of mystery, more singing, one death by sumo smothering, and love.
3. Hotel Ostend (Daughters of Darkness, 1971)
Seduction, homoeroticism, drowsy lustfulness – this one has it all.
Countess Bathory – history’s female version of Dracula – checks into an all-but-abandoned seaside hotel. The only other guests, besides the Countess’s lover, Ilona, is a honeymooning couple.
Effortlessly aristocratic, Delphine Seyrig brings a tender coyness, a sadness to the infamous role of Bathory. Seyrig’s performance lends the villain a tragic loveliness that makes her the most endearing figure in the film. Everybody else feels mildly unpleasant, a sinister bunch who seem to be hiding things. The husband, in particular, is a suspicious figure, and a bit peculiar. Kind of a dick, really – and Bathory, for one, has no time for dicks.
Caring less for the victims than for the predator – not because she’s innocent or good, but because her weary elegance makes her seem vulnerable – gives the film a nice added dimension.
The accents are absurd. The outfits are glorious. The performances are compellingly, perversely good, and the shots are gorgeous. Indulge yourself.
2. Bates Motel (Psycho, 1960)
It doesn’t look like much, but the old Bates place used to be something before the new highway. Now it’s really just Norman, some dusty bungalows, that ice machine, swamp out back, some stuffed birds and, of course, Mother.
Anthony Perkins was the picture of vulnerability in Hitchcock’s horror classic, but the motel itself is also about as benign as a spot can be. Hardly the downcast, shadowy, menacing lodging you think of today when you think of low-rent motels. It’s bright, clean and empty. Lonesome, but hardly frightening. Just like Norman.
1. The Overlook Hotel (The Shining, 1980)
You know who you probably shouldn’t hire to look after your hotel? Jack Nicholson.
A study in atmospheric tension, Kubrick’s vision of the Torrance family collapse at the Overlook Hotel is both visually and aurally meticulous. It opens with that stunning helicopter shot, following Jack Torrance’s little yellow Beetle up the mountainside, the ominous score announcing a foreboding that the film never shakes.
The hypnotic, innocent sound of Danny Torrance’s Big Wheel against the weirdly phallic patterns of the hotel carpet tells so much – about the size of the place, about the monotony of the existence, about hidden perversity. The sound is so lulling that its abrupt ceasing becomes a signal of spookiness afoot.
Nicholson outdoes himself. His early, veiled contempt blossoms into pure homicidal mania, and there’s something so wonderful about watching Nicholson slowly lose his mind. Between writer’s block, isolation, ghosts, alcohol withdrawal, midlife crisis, and “a momentary loss of muscular coordination,” the playfully sadistic creature lurking inside this husband and father emerges.
Brandon Cronenberg + Mia Goth + Alexander Skarsgård … for a very specific set of people, the sum there is hell yes.
Riding my favorite wave in horror – that rich people are unspeakably diabolical – writer/director Cronenberg takes us on a strange journey through privilege, debauchery, entitlement, boredom, narcissism, psychotropic drugs and more in his trippy new flick, Infinity Pool.
Skarsgård is James Foster, a writer of very little renown who’s vacationing on a fictional island nation with his wealthy wife (Cleopatra Coleman). They’re bored, but as luck would have it, James’s number one fan Gabi (Goth) and her husband have vowed to show them a good time.
Cronenberg’s ultimate concept is clearly, wildly his own, but moments sometimes call to mind ideas from last year’s Speak No Evil, as well as Society, Kill List, Hour of the Wolf, and A Serbian Film (no, not that part). Still, the film never feels borrowed. Uncomfortable, yes. Borrowed? No.
James represents the regular Joe – yes, a very good-looking version, but regular, nonetheless. And no matter how long he plays the part, he’s an outsider. The truly wealthy are alien. Beyond the sci-fi insanity, beyond the outright body horror, this is the most horrific element of the film because feels honest. It touches a nerve.
In 2020, Jeff Bezos racked up more than 16k in parking tickets. Because, why not? He wanted to park there. Once you reach a certain tax bracket – which is the one where you pay no taxes at all – no rules apply. And that does not create better people.
It’s fascinating and refreshing, this particular approach to the story. These particular villains. And Goth proves once again to be a seductive menace and a force to be reckoned with.
There are certain scenes in this – one in a group holding cell at the island prison, for instance – that are as insightful, impressive and memorably horrific as anything any Cronenberg has filmed.
It’s hard to believe this is only Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature. It does not pack the visceral punch of 2020’s Possessor, but it is a satisfyingly surreal piece of class warfare and an outstanding way for the genre to kick off 2023.
Two full hours of grit, sweat, and anxiety from all participants, both in the film and out. That’s what you can expect from the latest by director Jerome Salle.
Kompromat is one of those unnerving instances for reviewers where your technical training and study of film confuses your internal perception. The film excels where it is meant to: it’s tense to the point of unbearable anxiety. It’s forcibly eye-opening, and it’s nauseatingly realistic. Lead actor Gilles Lellouche gives a standout performance as a grounded, gritty, desperate, resourceful anti-hero. The story, while seemingly convenient at times, builds masterfully while swerving down winding thoroughfares.
The viewing experience itself can be defined as less than pleasant. While Salle succeeds at delivering a hard-to-watch movie, he also creates… a hard-to-watch movie.
With something so viscerally unsettling, you might expect your worldview to be heightened as a result of the painstaking two hours spent. Kompromat doesn’t exactly succeed in this – it paints the illustration of a wrongly accused straight, white, French man in Russia’s highly unprogressive society. All facts and facades we’ve seen at play before. So it begs the question, what is the point?
The point, quite bluntly, seems to be tension. Building it, releasing it, savoring it. If the film makes you break a sweat, the crew can pat themselves on the back.
Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach. Draping the background with a seemingly pressing political story convolutes the film’s actual intention. If Kompromat could be obvious in its goal, a more palpable connection between audience and film could be forged. Instead, there seems to be some thrashing in the netting Salle creates.
While Kompromat excels at holding a consistent fever pitch, it allows itself too much freedom. The two-hour runtime feels like a dumbbell lowering suffocatingly onto your chest. The film’s consistency in story and performance through the overly long run is a testament to Salle’s command of scene and pace but shows a streak of overindulgence.
If your New Year’s resolution is to elevate your heart rate for 2 hours at a time, pick this up. If breaking a sweat while sitting on your couch isn’t appealing, you may want to skip out on Kompromat.
Tania Anderson’s documentary The Mission details the lives of four very young adults as they embark on two-year missions to try to spread the word of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the population of Finland. Finland—a country in northern Europe with a high per-capita income, one of the best educational systems in the world, an extensive social safety net, and one that has ranked number one in every annual report of World Happiness since 2018. Not the kind of place where people are likely to be shopping for a new religious modality.
Barely out of childhood, the two American men and women spend a few weeks in a kind of missionary boot camp in Utah before being thrown into a new country, expected to converse with the locals despite only knowing a few stock phrases (and often stumbling over those) and ultimately convince them to convert. Their lives are regimented. Expected to rise at 6:30 AM each day and begin work, they are assigned a companion—a stranger—who spends all “non-hygiene-related time” with them for nine weeks before the companion is replaced with another. They are only allowed contact with family and friends once per week. And they have to pay for the privilege of doing this. The Church does not subsidize its missionaries.
Anderson emphasizes the loneliness. She lingers on the barren, spare quarters in which the subjects live. She uses long establishing shots of the landscape to show how small they are in this new country. She lingers on conversations that strain the viewer’s ability to handle social awkwardness.
In contrast to the aims of its subjects, the documentary itself is not preachy. It covers enough successful conversions and strengthening of faith to balance out the coverage of those dealing with doubt and existential despair. However, this balance is delivered at the surface level. We don’t really get to know any of the four subjects and what motivates them in any profound way. Their reasons for taking on this task, the logistics of the financial commitments, the cultural differences between Americans and Finns, and the missionaries’ personal struggles are only hinted at or covered at the depth one might expect while making small talk at a church bake sale.
The mission takes place between 2019 and 2021 and, unbelievably, it does not consider COVID-19 and the impact it had on a socially-focused pursuit, at all. Nothing about the fears these folks had at being stuck in a foreign country when the borders started closing. Nothing about how they reacted when millions of mink that had been culled from fur farms in nearby Denmark started to rise from the grave. There are some shots toward the end where the missionaries are wearing masks, but aside from that, the pandemic is completely erased from existence, much in the same way that you are likely to forget this entirely adequate documentary after you have watched it.
Writer/director Michael Jacobs is best known for producing TV shows that speak to teens: My Two Dads, Boy Meets World, and Girl Meets World. But just seconds after what feels like the longest pre-film credits in the history of cinema, his feature film Maybe I Do makes certain we know this is not that.
The romantic dramedy enlists four truly great veteran talents to take a peek at romance, love, and existential angst in your sixties.
Grace (Diane Keaton, who executive produces) can’t help but notice Sam (William H. Macy), who’s sobbing at a foreign film as he dumps M&Ms into his popcorn tub. She reaches out to him because he “seems distressed.” He assumes that, as she is also alone at a movie, she, too, is distressed.
She admits she is, but honestly, there’s nothing wrong with going alone to the movies. I’m saying that, not Diane.
Anyway, they bond. Meanwhile, Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon quietly out-hot each other. And across town, young Michelle (Emma Roberts) questions an uncertain future with Allen (Luke Bracey).
So, the film offers three different vignettes of couples talking, arguing, and ruminating about love until worlds collide in the most obvious and contrived way possible. The sheer volume of cliches at work here could drown out almost anything of value, but how do you dismiss a film starring Macy, Keaton, Sarandon and Gere? Even the tritest dollops of wisdom sound charming and/or wizened coming from one of these four.
Gere and Macy together are a particularly tender treat, and while I applaud the actors and the opportunity the film allows, this scene best articulates the movie’s most nagging weakness. The whole film is sad for successful men who are dissatisfied with how their lives turned out. No one on earth is less pitiable than a successful middle-aged white man and his angst over what he hasn’t accomplished. But Gere and Macy almost make it work.
The second biggest problem is that the film hits traditional romance so hard. The act that has Michelle rethinking her relationship with Allen should be a red flag, an end to the relationship. Instead, it becomes a “marry me or it’s over” ultimatum. No. No! And then the whole film, one brimming with wildly unhappy marrieds, intends to prove to us all that you just have to go ahead and take the leap with someone who publically humiliated you to make sure they didn’t have to commit to you.
No.
Maybe I Do is unabashedly romantic, deeply traditional, well-meaning and tired. So tired. But at least you get to see four tremendous actors riff off each other for 90 minutes.
