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The Other Woman

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My Darling Vivian

by George Wolf

Imagine if the world thought your father was one half of an all-time great love story, but the other half wasn’t your mother.

You’d probably want people to know her story, too.

Director Matt Riddlehoover lets the four daughters of Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto remove the shadow that has long obscured their mother’s life. In the endlessly endearing My Darling Vivian, we’re introduced to a woman of great strength and grace, and an intimate story that reinforces both the power and pain of love.

Johnny and Vivian met as teenagers in Texas, writing passionate letters while he was away as an Air Force cadet, then marrying young and immediately starting a family before his legendary music career exploded.

Whether by necessity or choice, Riddlehoover interviews Rosanne, Tara, Kathy and Cindy Cash separately, and the result is a wonderful mix of memory and perspective. Rosanne’s remark that the sisters had “four different mothers” rings true as their recollections of youth often bounce off one another with a charming Roshoman-style variety.

The stream of still photos, home movies and excerpts from the nearly one thousand letters (!) Vivian saved presents incredible insight into the sweetness of young love and the increasing demands on the shy and anxiety-prone wife of a superstar.

While Johnny’s constant touring left Vivian alone to care for four children under six years old, the pressures of fame, Cash’s drug use and the shameful accusations about Vivian’s ethnicity all added to the toxic atmosphere. As rumors swirled about Johnny’s involvement with June Carter, news of their parents’ divorce actually came as a relief to the oldest of the Cash sisters.

The memories are often presented with aching detail – coming home from school and seeing fresh dry cleaning meant their mother had not committed suicide that day – and the openness of the family archives is breathtaking. And still, Vivian’s own voice remains absent, haunting much of the film until Riddlehoover plays that hand for maximum effect.

My Darling Vivian is essential to understanding the complete legacy of a cultural icon. But even beyond the celebrity trappings, it is a bittersweet testament to love, to family, and to scars that never quite fade.

And, most of all, it’s a record-straightening ode to a woman well worth knowing.

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Marathon Man

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Runner

by Seth Troyer

I am basically still on the verge of tears as I write this. Bill Gallagher’s emotional documentary Runner opens with sports coverage of a marathon and slowly zooms in on one man in particular. “Now this particular runner,” says a dorky sportscaster, “has an unbelievable story.”

He doesn’t know the half of it. This is the story of Guor Marial, a Sudanese refugee who went on a journey to become an Olympian. 

As a young boy, Marial runs from hardship to hardship, eventually getting separated from his family, and ultimately finding himself in America. It’s wild to hear Marial’s initial confusion at the absurdity of it all, that something he did to survive in Sudan is something westerners do as a sport. Marial hits the high school track field and metamorphosizes. From there we watch the harsh juxtaposition of this high school dream athlete winning medals while simultaneously struggling with the fact that his family members in Sudan are dying. 

My reservations about macho corporate sports went out the window as I watched this boy running in the name of his faraway home. It’s also a wonderful thing to see journalists, coaches and politicians (mostly white, privileged Americans) one by one lay down their false crowns in awe before this kid who has gone through actual hell and is using his power to reach for nothing less than the Olympic games. 

This is the rare documentary that truly does justice to its incredible hero. It is cinematic to the point where your first reaction might be to think you are watching staged reenactments, but no, this is all real. They have footage of seemingly every moment of Marial’s journey, as well as animation and news footage depicting the hell of war and starvation in Sudan. 

Arguably the film’s most emotional moment occurs when Mrial returns to South Sudan to be reunited with his parents, who he has not seen in years. The moment when his mother, who lost so many of her children, collapses to the ground at the sight of her long lost son is one of the most powerful moments I have ever seen captured by a camera.

This is still only the beginning of the story of the first Olympian from South Sudan: a beautifully human story that is about nothing less than what makes us go, what makes us try, and what makes us run. 

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Irregular Checkup

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Babyteeth

by George Wolf

Why would a first-time feature director make sure her camera lingers a few extra beats on one of those old karaoke videos where the visuals bear no relation to the lyrics being sung?

Because it’s a sly reinforcement of the abrupt, defiant way that Shannon Murphy is telling the story of Babyteeth, and of the unconventional soul at the heart of the film.

That soul would be Milla (Eliza Scanlen), a seriously ill Australian teen who literally bumps into the 23 year-old Moses (Toby Wallace) while waiting for a tram.

She likes his hair, so he gives her a haircut. She brings him home, and suddenly Milla’s parents (Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis) have something new to worry about.

“That boy has problems!” Mom shouts.

Milla answers, “So do I!”

True enough, and Rita Kalnejais delivers a debut screenplay that embraces the tough and the tender while taking us inside a fraying family dynamic.

Mom Anna used to be a impressive pianist, but she struggles to stay off pills and keep her tears at bay. Dad Henry is a psychiatrist who handles Milla’s illness in a more pragmatic fashion while he develops a strange fixation on the pregnant neighbor (Emily Barclay).

Mendelsohn and Davis are customarily excellent, each reinforcing the different ways that grief can manifest itself, often pulling them closer and increasing their distance in equal measure. In lesser hands, the eccentricities of these characters could have dissolved into caricature or misguided comic relief, but Mendelsohn and Davis each bring a weary stoicism that keeps both parents grounded.

Scanlen, fresh off playing Beth in last year’s glorious revision of Little Women, is completely transfixing as a girl impatient to experience life. The more Milla is reminded of her sickness, the more she rebels, and Scanlen finds a mix of courage and fear that never feels false.

The whiff of death in coming-of-age dramas has often been reduced to manipulative claptrap, but Murphy takes a bulldozer to that notion with an ambitious narrative that does not allow you to get comfortable.

She introduces themes using chapter titles (some generic, some genuinely touching), transitions very abruptly and leaves some matters unexplained. Murphy’s approach is uniquely assured, requiring our attention but rewarding our emotional investment, as the few mawkish leanings are swept away by the film’s wickedly perverse sense of humor.

After years of directing shorts and TV episodes, Murphy lands on the big screen as a vibrant new voice. Like Milla, she is setting her own pace in the search for the beauty in life, and Babyteeth finds that beauty in unexpected places.

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You’ve Got a Friend in Me

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Jack & Yaya

by Brandon Thomas

LGBTQ youth often find themselves at the receiving end of family and friend abandonment. The people who are supposed to support them through the coming out simply walk away. The story at the heart of Jack & Yaya is about what happens when two childhood friends go through the same life-changing events, and how those closest to them stick around to champion their lives.

Jack and Yaya grew up as next-door neighbors in south New Jersey. From early on, they both saw who the other truly was, a girl and a boy, even if the rest of their family and friends did not. 

In her directorial debut, Jennifer Bagley wisely lets the film’s two subjects be front and center. Jack and Yaya share a genuine openness about their lives. Absent is any kind of hubris when the two of them talk about their struggles or their successes. This honest, matter-of-fact nature feels immediately welcoming.

The focus on day-to-day struggles for transgender people is real and evident even in this sunnier-than-normal documentary. Jack struggles with running into discrimination even in a city as large as Boston. Yaya worries about the constant financial stress around obtaining hormones. It’s a needed dash of reality. 

As the colorful cast of characters who revolve around Jack and Yaya are introduced, it’s not hard to see how these two became the people they are. Bagley naturally captures the warmth and love that flows between all of them. Amidst the alcohol and ‘70s rock, Yaya’s uncle Eddie spills to the camera how much love he has for both Yaya and Jack. “All you need is frickin’ love!” bellows Eddie. 

Jack & Yaya works exceptionally well at being a celebration of these two people as they figure out their ever-changing lives. This isn’t a film interested in making a grand social statement. Bagley lets these two tell their story, and show us who they really are through their own words and actions.

Jack & Yaya beautifully shows how good we all can be when we prop each other up. Jack and Yaya’s lives could’ve gone so much differently. But they had each other and a support system that evolved into a deep friendship of genuine acceptance and caring. 

“All you need is frickin’ love!” indeed.

Shudder Premiere

Handle with Care

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Scare Package

by Hope Madden

Has there ever been a place as glorious as the video store? The brain trust behind the horror anthology Scare Package clearly understands the secret joys of the independent VHS retailer and their beloved horror wares.

“This weekend is all about no rules, no clothes, and no cell service,” begins Emily Hagins’s surprisingly fresh meta-horror Cold Open. It sets the stage for a really funny way to spend about an hour and 40 minutes.

Chad Buckley of Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium (directed by Aaron B. Koontz) is training a new employee, covering the ins and outs of the VHS game and dodging that creepy regular customer. Periodically we get a glimpse at the store’s rentals, taking shape as the set of horror shorts that make up the anthology.

Chris McInroy’s consistently funny One Time in the Woods plays like a good natured Troma flick. So, it’s a bloody, gooey, gore-soaked, viscera-saturated mess with a bright disposition.

Noah Segan (Knives Out) makes his directorial debut with M.I.S.T.,E.R., which boasts the great casting of Noah Segan (how’d he get him?!) as well as Jocelyn DeBoer (Thunder Road, Greener Grass). You wouldn’t call it inspired, but a nice sleight of hand and one subtly creepy bartender are enough to keep you guessing and entertained.

Anthony Cousins’s The Night He Came Back IV: The Final Kill doesn’t offer much in the way of a fresh perspective and feels especially tame compared to the two other meta-horror episodes in the package. The two shorts that bridge sci fi and horror—Courtney and Hilary Andujar’s Girls’ Night Out of Body and Baron Vaughn’s So Much To Do—don’t answer nearly as much as they ask, but they do keep your attention.

The collection is weaved together with love and a lot of nerdy horror know-how. Was it destined for Shutter? Well, that Jo Bob Briggs cameo couldn’t have hurt.

Scare Package sports an excellent use of budget for a fun, campy set of horror-loving films—the kind of short movies that lovingly mock the genre. Most of the episodes offer a knowing lampooning, and each ends abruptly enough to avoid wearing out its welcome.

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Only One Star

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Queen of Lapa

by Rachel Willis

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the neighborhood of Lapa is home to Luana Muniz, the focus of directors Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat’s documentary, Queen of Lapa.  

A photoshoot of Muniz opens the film. She is elegant in black lingerie, holding a cigarette; the audience learns that she has been a sex worker since the age of eleven and is now one of the most recognized transgender (Luana prefers the term transvestite) activists in Brazil.

A hostel run by Muniz for over two decades provides a safe haven for transgender sex workers. It is this world that Collatos and Monnerat are privy to. They are given a level of access that allows the audience to experience these women’s lives as they live them.

Muniz is a bit of a mother hen to the women, many of them even call her Mother Luana. She scolds them for not cleaning up after themselves, expresses concern over injuries, and fights to ensure the house remains a place where transgender men and women can live and work safely.

It’s an important concern. Transgender men and women, and sex workers, experience violence at alarming rates. One of the women speaks of having gasoline poured on her before she escapes her attacker. The same woman is beaten and robbed one night, showing her injuries to her Facebook Live audience. Another woman is nearly raped but manages to flee.

However, the film focuses on more than one aspect of these women’s lives. It allows us a chance to spend time with the housemates and get to know them. There is a familial atmosphere as the roommates watch TV, do each other’s nails, eat meals together, and argue.

Some of the conversations are more interesting than others, but the filmmakers play a critical role with their lack of presence. They allow the group to share their own stories, to let their voices be heard at a time when it is essential that those who have been silenced in the past are allowed to speak. 

Muniz says of herself, “the only star here is me,” and in some ways, she is the sun to a community of people who need an advocate like her. One of the women recalls seeing Muniz on TV as a child, never expecting to know her as an adult, but it’s an example of the impact she has had on the community. She teaches the women how to be safe, how to not be ashamed of who they are, and that they are loved.

The world could use more people like Luana Muniz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfBAz26dZnY

Fright Club, Slider

Fright Club: Dark Ages Horror

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Witches, starvation, ghouls, oppression, Church and governmental oppression—there’s a reason they call them the Dark Ages! Filmmaker George Popov (Hex, The Droving) joins us to discuss the best horror movies about the Dark Ages.

6. Black Death (2010)

What Christopher Smith (Severance) delivers with Black Death that few if any horror filmmakers tackling the same themes match is a clear eye as to the flaws and merits on both sides of the witch hunt.

Eddie Redmayne is an innocent and a believer; Sean Bean is no innocent, but he does believe. Both are part of a Christian army who get word of a village untouched by pestilence—a village where some say the dead have been raised.

What follows is a punishingly human drama about using religion to suit your own ends, about what evil we are and are not willing to accept, and about the end of innocence.

5. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The sixth of seven Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe films—and maybe the best—sees Price in a role that delights in its own evil.

No Corman film has ever used color to such glorious extreme, a tactic absolutely in keeping with Poe’s text. The film works from a short story, padding with subplots (one from Poe, one from elsewhere) that work well within the story and generate a little emotional depth beneath the lurid color and debauchery.

Stay through to the end, whatever you do, but do give this one a chance.

4. Hex (2017)

Two soldiers separated from their companies during England’s Civil War chase each other into a deep forest. The rebel Thomas (William Young) is young, soft and open to the dark poetry and doom of witchcraft. He’s not long in the woods before he sees his true enemy is not the countryman behind him with his sword drawn.

Richard (Daniel Oldroyd) fights for King and Country, strident and single-minded, logic keeps him from believing until he has little choice.

There is more happening here than you realize, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that you only recognize the film’s purpose when they are ready for you to do so. The result is a satisfying tale with more power than just magic.

3. Army of Darkness (1992)

Easily the most fun you’ll have with a Dark Ages film, Army of Darkness is Sam Raimi’s third and silliest installment in his Evil Dead trilogy. In it, like a Connecticut Yankee, hero Ash (Bruce Campbell at his buffest) finds himself transported to dark times.

You know what he finds. Deadites.

Ash must woo the girl (and then maybe accidentally get her changed into a deadite, which will necessitate killing her), say the spell (which he may or may not entirely screw up, inadvertently raising an army of darkness), and save the day.

Endlessly quotable, utterly bananas, and just a thrill ride of Monty Python meets Three Stooges meets Ray Harryhausen fun, Army of Darkness is a treasure.

2. The Head Hunter (2018)

In a land of yore, the geography forbidding, a far off trumpet calls for the hardiest of warriors—those equipped to fight beasts.

Director Jordan Downey shows much and tells little in his nearly wordless medieval fantasy, The Head Hunter. The filmmaker parses out all the information you’ll need to follow this simple vengeance myth, but pay attention. Very little in this film is without meaning—no creepy image, no creak or slam.

In what is essentially a one man show, Christopher Rygh delivers a quiet, brooding performance for a quiet, brooding film. He cuts an impressive figure as the Vikingesque warrior at the center of this adventure and his work speaks of joyless endurance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZqtRbifT6Q

1.Hagazussa (2017)

Making a remarkably assured feature debut as director, Lukas Feigelfeld mesmerizes with his German Gothic poetry, Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse.

Settled somewhere in the 15th Century Alps, the film shadows lonely, ostracized women struggling against a period where plague, paranoia and superstition reigned.

It would be easy to mistake the story Feigelfeld (who also writes) develops as a take on horror’s common “is she crazy or is there malevolence afoot?” theme. But the filmmaker’s hallucinatory tone and Aleksandra Cwen’s grounded performance allow Hagazussa to straddle that line and perhaps introduce a third option—maybe both are true.

The film lends itself to a reading more lyrical than literal. Feigelfeld’s influences from Murnau to Lynch show themselves in his deliberate pacing and the sheer beauty of his delusional segments. He’s captured this moment in time, this draining and ugly paranoia that caused women such misery, with imagery that is perplexingly beautiful.

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Mercy, Mercy Me

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Da 5 Bloods

by Hope Madden

Leave it to Spike Lee to follow up the socially searing masterwork in direction BlackKklansman with something bigger, badder and even more immediately relevant.

Da 5 Bloods follows four Vietnam Vets (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis) back to the jungle where they left so much. They left a lot more than most, actually, including a beloved brother and a lot of gold.

Chadwick Boseman haunts the frames and the buddies as Stormin’ Norm, the young platoon leader and inspiration that didn’t make it home. If he represents past tragedies, Jonathan Majors represents the way those pains echo into today.

A heist movie on the surface, Da 5 Bloods is clearly about a great deal more than making it rich. Lee has a lot to say about how those in power tell us what we want to hear so we will do what they want us to do.

As is always the case with Lee’s films, even the most overtly political, deeply felt performances give the message meaning. The entire cast is excellent, but Delroy Lindo is transcendent.

Lindo’s never given a bad performance in his 45 years on screen. As commanding a presence as ever at 68 playing Paul, Lindo again blends vulnerability into every action, whether funny, menacing or melancholy. His MAGA hat-wearing, self-loathing, dangerously conflicted character gives Lee’s themes a pulse. This may finally be the performance to get Lindo the Oscar he’s deserved for ages.

Staggeringly equal to the effort is Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) as Paul’s son David. His performance illustrates a resilience as well as a tenderness that is utterly heartbreaking.

Even so, here Lee avoids the sentimentality that undermined his 2008 war film Miracle at St. Anna. In its place is a clear-eyed look at the many, insidious effects of not just war but systemic oppression.

It should surprise no one that Lee’s latest happens to hit the exact nerve that throbs so loudly and painfully right now, given that he’s been telling this exact story in minor variations for 30+ years.

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Unto Others

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For They Know Not What They Do

by Hope Madden

“If a lot of people have just a little bit of courage, then nobody has to be a hero.”

If we can’t see the truth in that statement right now, we are truly lost. It’s a call to action, and an argument that For They Know Not What They Do patiently articulates.

A sequel of sorts to director Daniel G. Karslake’s 2007 doc For the Bible Tells Me So, For They Know Not What They Do revisits the Christian church after more than a decade to gauge its movement on LGBTQ rights.

The film drops you into the lives of four families navigating the complex world of faith and sexual identity.

Elliott is about to leave for his freshman year at Vassar, and he and his parents walk us through what it’s like to trust your adolescent enough to begin the irreversible. Ryan, with the help of his genuinely loving if deeply misdirected parents, commits to praying the gay away. Sarah is as committed to the political career she started as a middle school class president as she is in fully transitioning. Victor survived a tragedy thanks in part to the unflinching support of his Catholic parents.

In and around all of these stories, Karslake examines the political backlash to marriage equality, particularly the way the religious right has targeted the especially vulnerable transgender population and what that has meant in terms of violence.

All of the parents involved display their courageous human frailty, owning their immediate and long-term responses to knowledge of their children’s sexuality or gender identification.

Their continued reliance on faith to help them see where religious dogma had become poisonous is among the loveliest elements of the film. These parents lean on their scripture’s concept of forgiveness (mainly to forgive themselves for having harmed their children), love, and acceptance to help them see beyond their own fear.

It’s a path Karslake takes as well. This is a forgiving documentary. It never turns a blind eye toward the way the religious right uses organized religion as a tool to oppress. But FTKNWTD is more interested in how faith does not have to be tainted by this noxious hate. It’s a bold vision for a documentary on Christianity and LGBTQ suffering.

It is also perhaps the film’s strongest selling point. Karslake doesn’t preach at, condescend to or even vilify the audience most in need of the film’s message.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cke9VNzAqNY

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?