1964’s Bedtime Story begat 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and now, after begettin’ a gender switch, the con is on again as The Hustle.
This third time is not lucky, or charming, or funny. Mostly, it’s just painful.
Anne Hathaway is high-class grifter Josephine, who’s wary of newcomer Penny (Rebel Wilson) trying to work the same bit of French Riviera turf. Josephine’s attempts to drive Penny away go nowhere, so the two hatch a wager to decide just who will have to find new hunting grounds.
Hathaway is a worthy Oscar winner, and though Wilson’s pony could really use more tricks, she can be funny. What either one of them saw in this inane script is beyond me and beneath both of them.
The film seems overly proud of itself for the girl power wokeness, while director Chris Addison bases the updated gags on such contorted silliness that when Penny exclaims “That makes zero sense!” it feels like we just learned the identity of Keyser Soze.
If you’ve seen either of the first two go ’rounds, you already know how the con winds up, and it’s never been less fun getting there.
But if the heart of The Hustle is new to you, see steps one or two.
At a time when movies are pushing three hours, it feels weird to want one to run longer, but at just over an hour and a half, Poms feels way too short. It’s like a long SNL sketch.
A female-centric comedy about a retired teacher aching for one last shot at her childhood dream of becoming a cheerleader seems like a good option for Mother’s Day weekend—especially for the Boomers and their kids. The cast looks solid: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman. Poms coming “from the studio that brought you Bad Moms” appears promising.
But it’s all just perfunctory.
Director Zara Hayes and writer Shane Atkinson, both TV veterans making feature debuts, introduce characters via montage and then give them little to do or say.
People become strange antagonists, set on denying the senior cheerleading squad practice/performance time for no discernible reason. Folks burst into tears or have 180 degree shifts in perspective simply because the plot demands it.
Still, Keaton’s performance of a woman striving to live in
the moment while hiding terminal cancer is effective. The chemistry between
Keaton’s snarky Martha and Jacki Weaver’s bubbly Sheryl is cute. And when they
are performing, the women look like they are having a nice time.
You just wish that there was more of a story there, more character development, more cheerleading even. The cast is way too good for this.
Better confess right now: the whole Hobbit, Lord of the Rings thing just isn’t my bag. God bless you if you love the books, films and all, but the whole story just leaves me cold.
That’s not to say I can’t respect and admire the incredible imagination of author J.R.R. Tolkien, or the biopic about him that’s full of so much respect and admiration.
But what’s strangely missing in Tolkien is the wonder, the spark of endless creativity so abundant in the author’s expansive literary landscapes.
Writers Stephen Beresford and David Gleeson anchor Tolkien’s pre-Hobbit life in the trenches of WW1. As Officer Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) searches the battlefield for a boyhood friend, flashbacks fill us in on his upbringing as an orphan adopted into wealth.
With an eye on “changing the world through the power of art,” Tolkien forms a “Dead Poets” – type secret society with his mates at Oxford, where he impresses esteemed language professor Joseph Wright (Derek Jacobi in a wonderful cameo) as well as the lovely Edith Bratt (Lily Collins).
Both Hoult and Collins are committed and pleasing, but the courtship becomes just another informative but less-than-engrossing leg the film stands on.
Though director Dome Karukoski keeps things well-assembled and plenty reverent toward his subject, this film never quite conveys the spirit of inspiration it seeks to celebrate. With a frustrating lean toward safety over enlightenment, Tolkien turns an ambitious quest into a rather pedestrian journey.
It’s been 50 years since Charles Manson and his family effectively terminated the 1960s. Filmmaker Mary Harron (American Psycho) joins Daniel Farrands and Quentin Tarantino in commemorating the anniversary.
Earlier this year, Farrands unleashed the grim and quickly forgotten The Haunting of Sharon Tate, while Tarantino’s next likely cultural phenomenon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, promises to shine some of its spotlight on the Manson family crimes as well.
Harron’s film, Charlie Says, follows Leslie Van Houton (Hannah Murray), Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendon) and Patricia Krenwinkle (Sosie Bacon), three years after their incarceration, as they reflect on Manson’s promises and their own actions.
The aptly titled film is as concerned with the women’s brainwashing
as it is the crimes themselves, although it unfortunately provides no real
insight into either.
Harron spends about half the film in the California Women’s Correctional Facility, where the trio is taught by dedicated grad student Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever, portraying the author of the book that inspires the film).
The eerie chorus of “Charlie says…” greets nearly every
question Wever lobs at her students, which generally spurs a flashback to time
on the ranch with Charlie (Matt Smith).
Here we hit a snag, because Smith lacks the charisma, the
hatred, the ugliness or the psychotic aura to pull of Manson. He is never terrifying,
never seductive—never convincing.
In fact, most of the flock lacks the weather beaten conviction we recognize from police tapes. The period detail and tone lack degrees of authenticity as well.
Harron’s film opens strong, but it quickly loses its footing
and never really finds it again. Working from Guinevere Turner’s screenplay,
Harron brings up some interesting themes—particularly questioning the point of
breaking through to these women, knowing that puncturing their fantasies only
means their clear-eyed horror whether looking backward or forward.
But she doesn’t really land any punches. The film never
feels particularly queasying, especially enlightening or even very memorable.
I guess we still have Tarantino. Or maybe it’s just time we all moved on and stopped obsessing over what Charlie had to say.
Here’s a fun trend in recent indie filmmaking: let’s revisit
our historic “spinsters”, shall we?
Craig William Macneill gave Lizzie Borden the treatment last year with Lizzie, offering a pretty speculative and yet decidedly clear-eyed plausibility. But Madeleine Olneck has actual history to back her up.
Plumbing Harvard University Press’s stash of Emily Dickinson’s
poems and letters, Olneck suggests a different, funnier, slyer image of the
“recluse poet.”
Wild Nights with Emily plays almost like an episode of Drunk History, although no one seems to be drunk. Olneck simulcasts two parallel retellings of the life of America’s most beloved female poet, and among its most beloved poets, regardless of sex.
Wild Nights does not disregard sex, though.
One storyline—the one you’ll recognize—is dictated by Mabel
Todd (a delightful Amy Seimetz in a rare comedic performance). As she stands in
her cotton candy pink dress and hat, she regales a rapt audience with stories
of the Emily Dickinson she knew.
Well, “knew” seems to be a strong word.
Todd was, indeed, the first to publish Dickinson’s work
aside from a stray newspaper editor here and there. And why was that? Because
Dickinson was a recluse who shunned publication, as Todd defined it and history
was so quick to embrace it?
Or because Dickinson’s rule-defying work was ignored by the
literary establishment of her time and because she shunned Todd?
The offsetting narrative explores a different view of
Dickinson, warmly and beautifully portrayed by Molly Shannon. Her relationship
with lifelong friend, expert reader, fierce proponent and sister-in-law, Susan
Gilbert (Susan Ziegler), fuels a poignant and funny story.
Is a likelier reading of Dickinson’s work and letters that
of a passionate, lifelong love affair with Gilbert? Olneck’s consistently
entertaining narrative certainly believes so.
This is a specifically political film, one that begs with
outrage that we reexamine the stories we’ve been told about women in
history—this one woman, in particular.
It’s also a mash note to the breathtaking originality and talent of the poet, whose words flow through the film without burdening it by self-importance or pretentiousness. No, Olneck’s audacious wit and Ziegler and Shannon’s performances—alongside spot on comic turns from Seimetz, Brett Gelman, Jackie Monahan and Kevin Seal—guarantee the film never bends toward anything remotely stuffy.
Instead, Wild Nights with Emily offers a refreshing and awfully entertaining new way of seeing an American treasure.
If you’re thinking Christopher Lee and blood-drinking, virgin-sacrificing minions planning to summon demons forth and end humankind, well, you’re not alone. But you are off the mark.
And while I’m not sure documentarian Penny Lane intended recruitment with her film Hail Satan?, it’s really hard not to find yourself rooting for this scrappy group of idealists.
Lane and her subjects trace a brief history of Satanic grotesquerie in America. From Anton Lavey’s psychedelic Church of Satan (“a rat pack carnival”) to the “Satanic Panic” of the 80s and 90s through the abominable behavior inside the Catholic Church, the film notes how the devil has been used in American popular culture.
But for TST, “Satanism” is simply a way to rework a pejorative
term used historically to mark the outsider—a group to which members certainly relate.
Lucien Greaves (a pseudonym) devoted himself to establishing The Satanic Temple as a simple societal outgrowth, a tumor, if you will, on the ass of a state of Christian theocracy he saw in our country. He doesn’t worship Satan. He doesn’t even believe in Satan.
Greaves believes in the religious pluralism promised by the US Constitution, and what better way to convince a state house to remove its ten commandments statue than to insist on the erection of an 8 foot statue of Baphomet on the same lawn? Because, as far as the laws of the US are concerned, if you can’t have one, you can’t have the other.
Lane documents the organization’s growth from theatrical
political activist cell to global network of connected communities. Her wry
delivery matches the sensibilities of the Satanists in question, but their
outrage and their unexpected sense of community fuel the film.
As Lane’s investigation uncovers, The Satanic Temple’s surprising surge in popularity owes itself not just to a citizenry troubled by a sudden swing toward theocracy. It’s also due to the organization’s ability to represents a unified voice for outcasts.
Those very people most vilified by a conservative
“Christian” point of view find acceptance here. And while there may be no better way for them to
stick it to their oppressors, this is also their opportunity to make a
difference.
If the point of a documentary is to enlighten while it entertains, few docs have succeeded on both fronts as entirely as Hail Satan? In turns frustrating, funny and provocative, it is always a clear-eyed image of America as defined by our citizen’s imperative to challenge our government to better realize the ideals of our Constitution.
What to watch this week? Well, please start with the best documentary to be released in ages, then hit on a criminally underseen music biopic. After that, the choosing gets tougher, but let us be a guide.
Horror has a love/hate relationship with hippies. I suppose most of us do. And while some of the greatest films in the genre were made by Sixties freaks George Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper and the like, most of the time hippies’ onscreen representation got wrapped up in Manson hysteria.
5. Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)
Full disclosure: George objects to including this film on the list. It’s not good.
But it’s not good in such a good way! Director Bob Clark (Black Christmas, A Christmas Story) and writer/co-star Alan Ormsby seem basically to be taking out their frustrations at being part of the theatrical community.
Ormsby’s Alan is a director, and he drags his troupe of hippie thespians to a lonely island once used to bury the criminally insane. He then insists—if they ever want to work with him again—that his merry band dig up a body and perform a ritual to bring him back to life.
It’s basically theater kids making fun of theater kids. Watching a group of actors being literally eaten alive by their audience is its own stoke of genius, even if the film itself is not.
4. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
In this Age of Aquarius riff on J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novel Carmilla, the unfortunately titled Let’s Scare Jessica to Death follows a somewhat delicate woman through what amounts to either a nervous breakdown or the seduction of a female vampire.
A married couple and their organic farmer friend move into an old, abandoned house on a New England island. They find a vagrant—long haired, pretty, can play an acoustic guitar, natch—and they ask her to stay. Why not?
Deliberately paced and boasting a genuine and sympathetic performance by lead Zohra Lampert, the film’s a slow burn, a hallucinogenic smalltown horror. The creepy townies, the spooky cemetery girl, and the moody cinematography blend with Lampert’s committed performance to make this one a dusty little gem.
3. I Drink Your Blood (1970)
David Durston’s grindhouse classic (in which no one drinks anyone’s blood, regardless of what this lying trailer tells you) marks that great divide in hippie horror: those made by and about hippies and those made by opportunists seizing upon a population’s terrified fascination with the Manson Family murders.
I Drink Your Blood is the latter. We open on a group of hippie Satan worshippers who turn out to be gang rapists. They descend on a little town almost empty of inhabitants—the menfolk all having moved to live and work in the nearby mining camp. That leaves just that scrappy family working in the bakery.
But once young, vindictive Pete injects the baker’s meat pies with rabid dog blood, them no goodnicks might learn some manners.
Actually, that’s the last thing they’ll do.
This is an extremely violent film, not very well made and certainly not well acted. It has a punch, though, and several scenes are provocative enough to warrant its inclusion on this list.
2. Mandy (2018)
A hallucinogenic fever dream of social, political and pop-culture subtexts layered with good old, blood-soaked revenge, Mandy throws enough visionary strangeness on the screen to dwarf even Nicolas Cage in full freakout mode.
Red (Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live a secluded, lazily contented life somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
That contentment is shattered by a radical religious sect under the spell of Jeremiah (Linus Roache), who takes a liking to Mandy when the group’s van (of course it’s a van!) passes her walking on a country road.
Horror of the late 60s and early 70s saw hippies terrorizing good, upright citizens, perpetrating cult-like nastiness. Thanks to Charles Manson, society at large saw the counterculture as an evil presence determined to befoul conventional, Christian wholesomeness.
With Mandy, it’s as if the 70s and 80s have collided, mixing and matching horror tropes and upending all conceivable suppositions. In this case, zealots consumed with only the entitlement of their white, male leader wreak havoc on good, quiet, earth-loving people. The Seventies gave us some amount of progress, civil justice and peace that the Eighties took back under the guise of decency.
1.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Hippie pals pile into a van and head to Texas to double check that Grammy and Gamps still rest in peace, what with these rumors of grave robbing. Along the way they talk astrology, smoke some weed, pick up a hitchhiker–it’s all in a day’s journey for a hippie.
That hitchhiker thing goes sideways. In fact, the whole trip feels like a bad idea by the time pretty Sally Hardesty and her friends make a second trip to the cemetery. Well, what’s left of them.
A lot of new movies opening in Edgame’s aftermath. We talk through the good, the bad, the ugly, the missable and what’s new in home entertainment, including Long Shot, UglyDolls, The Intruder, Her Smell, The River and the Wall and Ask Dr. Ruth.
If you caught Dennis Quaid creeping around your house on numerous occasions, would you be scared, or just figure he was bringing over some mac and cheese?
Quaid might be one of the ultimate likable dudes, and his playing waaay against type is one of promising threads that The Intruder squanders in its warmed over dish of jump scares and borrowed ideas.
Beautiful couple Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good) are living the good life in San Francisco, but Annie feels it’s time they move to the country and start a family. She finds her dream house at the Napa Valley home of Charlie Peck (Quaid), and as quickly as you can say “overly rushed setup,” they’re moving in.
Charlie says he’s selling to head South, so why is he still coming over to mow the lawn, assist with the Christmas decorations, and find reasons to be alone with Annie?
Whaddya bet he’s not really retiring to Florida, or that some guy at Scott’s office would like nothing better than dig into Charlie’s past to find what he’s hiding?
Director Deon Taylor (Traffik) and writer David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace) are both treading familiar ground, too much on autopilot to successfully mine the contrasts they introduce.
It’s old ways versus new, city versus country, and a red hat wearing white guy terrorizing a black couple.
That’s plenty to chew on, but everyone goes hungry while characters make one idiotic decision after another on the subtlety-free ride to a finale lifted verbatim from a 90s thriller.
At some point, Taylor and Loughery needed to chose a path: logical, layered tension or unhinged, over-the-top fun.
It’s clearly evident which one Quaid wanted, but both he and the film end up undecided on the remodeling plans. Like that old, musty spare room with the bad wallpaper, The Intruder is a little creepy, too often unintentionally funny and in need of some work.
