Screening Room: The Call of the Wild, The Lodge, Brahms: The Boy II, The Assistant, Olympic Dreams, The Night Clerk
Friends to the End
Brahms: The Boy II
by Hope Madden
Wow. Who would have guessed that director William Brent Bell could drive his lackluster 2016 scary doll flick The Boy to a sequel? Not the half dozen or so of us who saw it.
But here you have it, Brahms: The Boy II is a real live movie.
Katie Holmes is in it. She plays Liza, concerned mum. She and her youngster Jude (Christopher Convery) survived a trauma and now they are recuperating, along with supportive dad Sean (Owain Yoeman), in an old English manner.
Jude finds this creepy doll buried outside, just his little white hand poking out from the ground. They take him inside and clean him up and keep him because they have never seen a horror movie.
If you have, you can definitely skip this one.
While there’s not a lot to like about Stacey Menear’s script, the problem here—as with his 2016 effort that began this whole killer plaything saga—feels more like poor direction. The story sets up a slight twist on a common horror theme: someone survives a traumatic experience only to find themselves in a potentially super natural circumstance. This begs the question, is this person insane, or is this super natural event really happening?
Scads and scads of horror films have wandered the psychological corridors of this premise. In this case, there are two possible crazies (both Liza and Jude). So, there is something here. We could twist throughout the film wondering, is this doll sentient evil? Is little Jude a budding maniac? Or is Liza suffering from PTSD and imagining it all?
We don’t wonder, though, because Bell clarifies the true culprit early and often. He’s so clear on the matter that the subsequent moments of Liza questioning her own sanity, or of Jude staring menacingly at his bully cousin, amount to an idiotic mishandling of material.
Ralph Ineson (The Witch) and his grizzled baritone make a quick appearance. There’s also a Google search or two—damn, horror movie Google searches deliver results, don’t they?! And how lucky to bump into that stranger in town who 1) asks where you live and, 2) happens to have all the info you’d ever need on the entire history of the home you’re renting. Too nutty!
But let’s be honest, do you even want to see this movie?
Muzzled
The Call of the Wild
by George Wolf
Look, we’re all thinking it, so let’s just get it out there.
Raiders of the Lost Bark.
Happy now? Okay, we can move on.
Truth is, there’s plenty of bark in this latest adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel, but not much bite to be found.
We’re still introduced to Buck, the sturdy St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix, as the spoiled pet of a wealthy California judge (Bradley Whitford) in the late 1800s. Stolen and sold as a sled dog to French-Canadian mail dispatchers, Buck adapts to the pack mentality and the harsh conditions of the Alaskan wilderness, eventually teaming up with the grizzled Thorton (Harrison Ford) for a journey into the Yukon.
It should come as no surprise that Ford is effortlessly affecting as a world weary mountain man. What is surprising is his endearing rapport with a CGI dog (motioned-captured by Terry Notary). Ford’s narration is earnest enough to soften its heavy hands, drawing Thorton and Buck as two kindred spirits, both lost in their own wilderness.
While taking the actual wild out of The Call of the Wild seems sadly ironic, the computer-generated beasts come to fall perfectly in line with director Chris Sanders’ family-ready vision for the enduring tale.
Stripped of any bloody carnage, cultural insensitivities or harsh realities, Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch, The Croods) and writer Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) fill the gaps with obvious questions, easy answers, and a flesh and blood bad guy (Dan Stevens in full Snidley Whiplash mode) who manages to be the biggest cartoon in a film full of computer animation.
Buck himself – looking fine but landing a notch below the motion capture high water of the last Planet of the Apes trilogy – is often stuck between Lassie and Scooby, heroically loyal while seeming to instantly understand everything from English to drunkenness.
With the sharp edges ground down, this Call of the Wild becomes a pleasant metaphor for the simple life, and for finding your place in it. In short, it’s a PG-rated primer, meant to hold a place until the kids are ready for the real thing.
Late Shift
The Night Clerk
by Hope Madden
Any film centering on a character on the Autism spectrum is risking a lot. It’s far too easy to simplify this character to a handful of tics that lend themselves to a narrative device: Mercury Rising, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Forest Gump. (That’s right. I said it.)
But if it’s done well, if the character is a character and not a narrative device, the film can benefit immeasurably.
The Night Clerk falls somewhere in between these two options.
Writer/director Michael Cristofer leans on a committed cast, including the always wonderful Tye Sheridan in the lead, to pull you into a mystery thriller that may be too simple for its own good.
Sheridan is Bart. He works nights at a hotel near his home and in his off hours he practices. He rehearses human interaction, small talk. He and his mother (Helen Hunt, a touching mixture of brittle and tender) live day to day in what has clearly become well-worn patterns. Most nights at work are probably uneventful, but on this particular night, Bart discovers a murder.
The detective on the case (John Leguizamo) suspects Bart, but Bart is distracted by a kind hearted and lovely new guest (a convincing Ana de Armas).
Without Sheridan’s committed performance, the film would fall apart. At no point does Sheridan, Cristofer or this film condescend to Bart. The audience isn’t one step ahead of the character; we are piecing through the mystery along with him. We aren’t asked by the film to pity Bart but to be frustrated along with him, and Sheridan is up to the task of keeping this character from tipping into martyrdom.
The problem with this film is not the characterization of a young man with Asperger syndrome. The issue is the writing.
Cristofer may nail the characters—and for the most part, with the help of talented performers, he does. But the lapses in logic when it comes to the policework, not to mention the basic simplicity of the plot itself, keeps the film from really engaging or staying with you.
The plot feels almost too uncomplicated to be a TV drama let alone a feature film. Tensions over the outcome never rise above a flutter, and regardless of how strong the performances—de Armas, Hunt and Sheridan, in particular—this is a thriller that rarely manages to generate any real tension.
As a character study it’s intriguing, sometimes comical and certainly respectful. It’s a showcase for solid acting, but not much else.
Lukewarm Runnings
Olympic Dreams
by Matt Weiner
You have to admire the chutzpah when the first feature film ever to shoot on location at the Olympics has the star athlete’s event be over immediately after the opening ceremony.
But it’s an anticlimax that sets the tone for the rest of Olympic Dreams. Cross-country skier Penelope (real-life Olympian Alexi Pappas) is at a crossroads in her life. Young in years but already worn out in a world that measures time in all-consuming four-year spans, she spends the rest of her time at the Olympic Village wandering around, talking to fellow athletes and delaying the inevitable return to reality when she has to go back home.
She meets volunteer dentist Ezra (Nick Kroll, foreshadowing an effective mid-career transition to these reined in dramedy roles), an outgoing Olympics nerd who’s just happy to be there.
The two hit it off, united by a vague sense of longing for… well, something. It’s a movie with modest aims, which are often dwarfed by the impressive settings. The story (by Pappas and Kroll along with Jeremy Teicher, who also directs) feels like it came long after securing the PyeongChang Olympic Village as the setting.
There’s the barest of plots, a sort of fish-out-of-water romcom that plays like a mumblecore Lost In Translation. As endearing as the two leads are, there’s not a lot of scaffolding to help them out. The film relies less on subtle characterization and more on a safe bet that you’ve seen these particulars enough to fill in the blanks yourself.
It’s a shame because Kroll and Pappas excel in their elements. Between Kroll’s deadpan improv with the various athletes and Pappas’ sincere empathy for the sacrifice and emotional highs and lows constantly unfolding in the background, it’s a wonder the filmmakers didn’t play it straight as a documentary.
The film has plenty of warm moments, with Pappas especially managing to balance a range of heartbreak, uncertainty and charm in a way that doesn’t get to come through in the official behind-the-scenes featurettes during the Olympics.
There’s just not enough there to back her up. The film might take us to the finish line, but just barely.
Death by a Thousand Papercuts
The Assistant
by Christie Robb
One of the more depressing aspects of maturity is the realization that evil is somewhat banal. Rarely does the antagonist sport a handlebar mustache that he twirls while ogling the victim he’s tied to the railroad tracks. The heinous are more ubiquitous and their misdeeds are cliched. The soul is crushed, not under a train, but under the repetition of many predictable, everyday disappointments.
Kitty Green’s The Assistant is a day-long coming-of-age story. Jane (Julia Garner), the titular assistant, has held her job for five weeks. We follow her from her bleary pre-dawn commute till she shuffles away from the office hours after sunset. She’s entry level at a New York production company, one of many assistants to an entertainment bigwig with a well-used casting couch.
Her day is filled with mundane tasks: organizing travel, making copies, stocking the fridge with bottled water, cleaning cum stains off her boss’s furniture, taking messages, fielding phone calls, ordering lunch…
Concerned about a young and potentially vulnerable new-hire, Jane tries to alert folks at Human Resources. But there are no heroes at corporate.
Garner carries the film with a nuanced performance that illustrates the exhaustion of a woman who represses much of herself in order to navigate a culture that normalizes predatory behavior and rewards complicity.
Informed by Green’s research and interviews with women post-Weinstein at technology and engineering companies as well as those in entertainment, The Assistant explores the machinery involved that works to normalize toxic work environments, that exchanges tolerance of bad behavior for a modicum of opportunity.
Green’s background in documentary (Ukraine Is not a Brothel, Casting JonBenet) serves her well here. She’s got an eye for the tiny but not so insignificant details that give an office its character—whether people decide to talk or to stay silent when a co-worker enters the breakroom, who gets off the elevator first, the aggression not so subtly hinted at by sliding a box of tissues across a desk.
It’s a hard film to watch that explores what, besides our time and labor, we are trading in exchange for a paycheck.
Jessie’s Boys
Jessica Forever
by Hope Madden
Shudder’s latest premiere, the French film Jessica Forever, offers a scifi antidote to war films. This is a quietly absorbing genre piece concerned with the lives left to those who know nothing more than fighting for survival, those who must endure not only what battle has done to them, but what battle has encouraged them to do.
In an unnamed future, Jessica (Aomi Muyock, Love), collects and rehabilitates “orphans” — feral young men with nothing and no one. Left entirely on their own, they wreak bloody havoc on society and are hunted by government-controlled drones.
We open on one such young man, Kevin (Eddy Suiveng). He’s thrown himself through a pane of glass in what looks to be a recently abandoned home. As a heavily armed tactical unit descends on the premises, only to softly embrace the combatant, writers/directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel introduce the visual and tonal fluidity the film will emphasize throughout its running time.
The dystopian cinematic landscape is highly populated, but Jessica Forever manages to carve out a unique space.
Muyock’s enigmatic central figure, so quietly effecting, provides the film its compelling center of gravity. Around her orbits a loose family of young men, and as Poggi and Vinel weave in and out of their day-to-day, we’re tuned into the filmmakers’ primary interest.
Unlike so very many movies out there, it is not the glamour or danger of war that attracts these filmmakers. Instead, Jessica Forever focuses on the mental and emotional wreckage these young men carry around with them as they cling to each other and their varying ideas of family, home and normalcy.
Everything about the design of this low budget scifi poem is astonishing. Working with cinematographer Marine Atlan, who shot the pair’s short After School Knife Fight, Poggi and Vinel create and sustain a hypnotic mood.
An absurd beauty to some of the shots helps the filmmakers offset its deliberate pacing. The entire crew, sound design in particular, pulls their weight as well, and the cumulative effect moves this lightly plotted ensemble piece in daring directions.
Winter Wonderland
The Lodge
by Hope Madden
It’s Christmas, and regardless of a profound, almost insurmountable family tragedy, one irredeemably oblivious father (Richard Armitage) decides his kids (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) should get to know the woman (Riley Keough) he left their mother for. A week in an isolated mountain cabin during a blizzard should do it.
Dad stays just long enough to make things really uncomfortable, then heads back to town for a few days to work. Surely everybody will be caroling and toasting marshmallows by the time he returns.
Though everything about The Lodge brings to mind A24 horror—for a number of reasons, Hereditary in particular—the film is actually a Hammer effort. No longer the corset-and-bloodletting studio, Hammer’s millennial output has been sparse but often quite good.
Choosing to back filmmakers Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz making their follow up to the supremely creepy Goodnight Mommy should be a solid risk to take. Here the pair does not shy away from the body of “white death” horror that came before The Lodge, with eerie and sometimes humorous nods to The Thing and The Shining, among others, haunting the piece.
The film also brings to mind A24’s It Comes at Night, another quiet film that saw Riley Keough trapped in an isolated abode with unsettling family dynamics. Keough is riding an impressive run of performances and her work here is slippery and wonderful. As the unwanted new member in the family, she’s sympathetic but also brittle.
Jaeden Martell, a kid who has yet to deliver a less than impressive turn, is the human heartbeat at the center of the mystery in the cabin. His tenderness gives the film a quiet, pleading tragedy. Whether he’s comforting his grieving little sister or begging Grace (Keough) to come in from the snow, his performance aches and you ache with him.
A healthy ability to suspend disbelief will aid in the experience The Lodge has to offer, but there’s no denying the mounting dread the filmmakers create, and the three central performances are uniquely effective. Thanks to the actors’ commitment and the filmmakers’ skill in atmospheric horror, the movie grips you, makes you cold and uncomfortable, and ends with a memorable slap.
I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of February 17
It’s a beautiful day in the living room, what with all these excellent movie choices! Well, not every single one is a winner, but that’s what we’re here for. We’ll help you get it sorted.
Click the film title to link to the full review.
Jojo Rabbit
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
21 Bridges
Frankie
Midway
Fright Club: Bad Date Horror
I can see where you might believe that these are films in which bad dates occur. While that might be a fine, future podcast and list, the fact is that today we explore the worst horror movies to watch while you are on a date.
While horror movies can sometimes make for excellent date night choices, these, we predict, will turn the date sour. They are also highly likely to douse any romantic sparks. (And if they don’t, your date is a sociopath. Be warned.)
5. Audition (1999)
The prolific director Takashi Miike made more than 70 movies in his first 20 or so years in film. Among the best is Audition, a phenomenally creepy May/December romance gone very, very wrong.
Audition tells the story of a widower convinced by his TV producer friend to hold mock television auditions as a way of finding a suitable new mate. He is repaid for his deception.
Nearly unwatchable and yet too compelling to turn away from, Audition is a remarkable piece of genre filmmaking. The slow moving picture builds anticipation, then dread, then full-on horror.
By the time Audition hits its ghastly conclusion, Miike and his exquisitely terrifying antagonist (Eihi
4. Irreversible (2002)
French filmmaker/provocateur Gaspar Noe does not play well with his audience. Every film, no matter how brilliantly put together or gloriously filmed, is a feat in masochism to watch. Later efforts, like Enter the Void and Climax, spread the misery out for its full running time, but for Irreversible, he gave it to us in two horrifying scenes.
Filmed in reverse chronological order and featuring those two famously brutal sequences, Noe succeeds in both punishing his viewers and reminding them of life’s simple beauty. While the head bashing is tough viewing, the film centers on a rape scene that is all but impossible to watch.
Noe’s general MO is to punish you through sheer duration. The scenes last so long you feel like you cannot endure another minute, and this scene certainly does that. Not shot even momentarily for titillation, and boasting a devastatingly excellent performance from Monica Bellucci, it justifies its own horrific presence. There are other films with necessary and difficult rape scenes – Straw Dogs, I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on the Left, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – but none is harder to stomach than this.
There’s no denying the intelligence of the script, the aptitude of the director, or the absolute brilliance of Monica Bellucci in an incredibly demanding role.
3. Teeth (2007)
Of all the films built on the hysteria of impending womanhood, few are as specific as Teeth, a film in which a pubescent discovers a sharp set where teeth ought not be. This is a dark comedy and social satire that is uncomfortable to watch no matter your gender, although I imagine it may be a bit rougher on men.
Treading on the dread of coming-of-age and turning male-oriented horror clichés on ear, Teeth uses the metaphor implicit in vagina dentata—a myth originated to bespeak the fear of castration—to craft a parable about the dangers as well as the power of sexual awakening.
Written and directed by artist (and Ohioan!) Roy Lichtenstein’s son Mitchell, Teeth boasts an irreverent if symbol-heavy script with a strong and believable lead performance (Jess Weixler).
Weixler’s evolution from naïveté to shock to guilt to empowerment never ceases to captivate.
2. Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier’s foray into horror follows a couple down a deep and dark rabbit hole of grief. Von Trier’s films have often fixated on punishing viewers and female protagonists alike, but in this film the nameless woman (played fearlessly by Charlotte Gainsbourg) wields most of the punishment – whether upon her mate (Willem Dafoe) or herself.
Consumed by grief, a mother allows her husband—also grieving—to become her psychotherapist as they retreat to their isolated cabin deep in the woods where they will try to overcome the horror of losing their only child.
They won’t succeed.
Like dental scenes, gynecological horror draws a particular reaction. Whether it’s the abuse scene at the beginning of Proxy, nearly any scene in the brilliant French film Inside, or the final feast in Trouble Every Day, scenes of this ilk can be tough to watch. But to watch as Gainsbourg – who’s already inflicted some serious pain on Dafoe’s character – takes the scissors to herself is next to impossible.
1. A Serbian Film (2010)
This is not a movie we would recommend to basically anyone. That’s not to say it’s a bad film – it’s well directed, acted, and written. It’s just that the co-writer/director Srdjan Spasojevic is trying to articulate the soul-deadening effects of surviving the depravity of war.
The title is no coincidence – the film is meant to reflect the reality of a nation so recently involved in among the most horrific, unimaginable acts of war. It’s as if Spasojevic is saying, after all that, what could still shock us?
Milos (Srdjan Todorovic) was a porn star before the war. He’s lured back for one lucrative “acting” effort, but there’s a reason it pays so well.
The entire film is an assault, but there is one scene in this one that catapults it to the top of this list, and you probably already know what that is. Milos (Srdjan Todorovic) finally realizes the depths of his new director’s evil when he sees his latest effort: newborn porn. There is no unseeing this.
