Fright Club

Fright Club: Toolbox Horror

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Who’s idea was this? Because this was super fun. Horror filmmaker can get positively inspired by what they find in a tool box or garden shed.

But where to even start? Every Friday the 13th movie, every Sleepaway Camp – basically, every camping movie.

Plus, some films really give it away with their title: Driller Killer, Toolbox Murders (both), Saw (all of them), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (all of them).

It’s a good beginning. To narrow down the list of best horror scenes using tools, we started by categorizing. Here’s what we came up with.

5. Saws: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Saws are big in horror. Lots to choose from:

  • Pieces (1982) – a lot of chainsaw action here, but the girl in the bathroom is the best/worst
  • Tucker & Dale Versus Evil (2010) – bees and chainsaws! Hooray!
  • Evil Dead reboot (2013) – after Mia tears her own hand off, she tears into Evil Mia’s head with a chainsaw
  • Evil Dead 2 (1987) – Ash puts Linda’s head in a vice, then accidentally knocks a chainsaw into her re-animated body

Winner: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
– You hated Franklin, admit it. You should probably feel bad about that, but the point is that he is the only one who actually takes the chainsaw in TCM.

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

4. Drill: The Loved Ones (2009)

Again, a power drill is an excellent go-to for onscreen carnage. It’s like being at the dentist, only far bloodier. Several films made great use of it.

    • Driller Killer (1979) – basically every death scene
    • Body Double (1984) – our favorite scene here: Jake runs across to save the woman he’s been peeping on, and gets there in time to see the drill come through the ceiling above him, then all the blood

Winner: The Loved Ones (2009)

Bonus – also nails!

Lola (Robin McLeavy) and her dad make some effective use of several household items, but it’s the moving father/daughter bonding over the power drill that really makes an impression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hakZ4o5FPA

3. Hammer and Nail Family: Misery (1990)

A lot to work with here! Crucifixions, genetical spiking, Home Alone style shenanigans.

  • Evil Dead (2013) – nail gun to the face!
  • Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) – a serious nightmare scenario
  • You’re Next (2011) – underestimated Erin knows how to make use of all kinds of household wares, including that jug of nails she finds in the basement

Winner: Misery (1990)
Yes, it’s a mallet, but that’s in the hammer family, and no scene made 1990 movie audiences more uncomfortable than this. Poor James Caan. You know he’ll badass his way out of this situation at some point – but homey ol’ Annie (the BRILLIANT Kathy Bates) will have her way for a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zzg3UP-x8k

2. Lawnmowers: Dead Alive (1992)

Fewer options here, and most of them goofy.

  • Dr. Shock’s Tales of Terror (2003) – Here’s an obscure one, and not a great film. But, in one of the shorts (Garden Tool Murders), someone’s buried to their neck has their head’s run over with a lawnmower.
  • Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood (1988) – Yes, it’s a weed whacker. Close enough.

Winner: Dead Alive (1992)
This is the scene that made us realize we needed this countdown. Not just because it is an utterly inspired piece of splatter gore, but because it’s really the turning point for poor, sweet, milquetoast-y Lional Cosgrove.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC1d7dw24Gg

1. Scissors/Shears: Antichrist (2009)

Toughest choices here. So many outstanding possibilities!

  • The Burning (1981) & Friday 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) use gardening shears, but it’s your ordinary house scissors that do the most inspired damage.
  • May (2002) – sweet May’s first kill is an impressive piece of action with her sewing scissors
  • Felt (2014) – that puppet making is all leading somewhere…
  • Oldboy (2003) – if you haven’t seen this, we don’t want to ruin it. Suffice it to say, Dae-su wants to make sure he never says.
  • Inside (2007) – Oh, what Beatrice Dalle can do with a pair of scissors. They’re used repeatedly and really well.

Winner: Antichrist (2009)
If you haven’t seen Lars von Trier’s one all out horror show or the scene in question, we’re not going to tell. We’re not going to show you, either. We want you to be as effected by the act as MaddWolf writer Christie Robb was. We lent her the screener and she watched it while she was on a treadmill. She fell off and did herself an injury.

Not as bad as the injury in the film though, thank God.

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Guilt Trip

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Snatched

by George Wolf

In the opening few minutes of Snatched, we see inside a photo album with various shots of an unforgettable face.  It’s a younger Goldie Hawn, and all the snapshots bring a warm reminder of just how long she’s been an effortlessly likable piece of pop culture. Making her a big part of  Amy Schumer’s follow-up to the hilarious Trainwreck seems like a fine idea.

Check that, it is a fine idea, and a missed opportunity.

The photos remind Emily (Schumer) how fun and adventurous her mom Linda (Hawn) used to be, so she coaxes Mom into joining her on a trip to Ecuador, where they’ll “put the fun in non-refundable!”

They’re promptly kidnapped, manage to escape, and director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, 50/50, Warm Bodies) fills the rest of the film with Goldie and Amy running from the bad guys and doing what they can with contrivance, obvious gags and a lackluster screenplay that Schumer unfortunately did not write. The Trainwreck script, plus her TV work, have shown Schumer can bring both laughs and smarts, and Snatched could use more of both.

Instead, the script from Katie Dippold (The Heat, last year’s Ghostbusters – both underrated) finds more solid footing with supporting characters, such as Ike Barinholtz as Emily’s brother, Wanda Sykes as a nosy fellow traveler, and Christopher Meloni as a wannabe hero.

These two leads deserve better than a by-the-numbers romp with only scattershot giggles. Where’s that confident, “take some chances” attitude that Emily wants Linda to re-discover?

Still missing, apparently.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Hometown Hero

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Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

by Rachel Willis

When you think of a city, what is the first image that comes to mind? Great buildings rising into the sky or masses of people living, working and playing on the streets and sidewalks?

These two ideas form the diametrically opposing viewpoints of city planning and urban development at the heart of the documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.

The focus of Matt Tyrnauer’s doc is Jane Jacobs, a writer who studied urban development and the negative effects of urban renewal on formerly vibrant city centers. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, highlighted the ways the “top-down” approach to urban development ruined cities. Jacobs’s observations were based on her own experiences living in Greenwich Village, and on the large urban planning projects helmed by New York’s city planner, Robert Moses.

Using extensive archival footage, Tyrnauer paints the history of New York’s reconstruction starting at the end of World War II. Coming out of the Great Depression, the leaders of New York were eager to revive the city. For them, Moses was the man to undertake the massive project.

Citizen Jane highlights the detriment Moses’s plans brought to the people living and working in New York. Unfortunately, New York wasn’t the only city affected. Across the United States and the world, Moses’s vision was replicated.

Jacobs believed in a “bottom-up” approach to city development. Rather than taking a macro view, she advocated talking to the people who made up the city’s neighborhoods and using their input to move forward.

The documentary’s many interviews with architects, city planners, and historians back Jacobs’s views. Scenes of empty apartment buildings, desolate streets, and cities dissected by sprawling highways underscore the failure of Moses’s plans. On paper, the cities look vibrant, but in reality, they’re empty shells.

The cinematography blends well with the story Tyrnauer tells. Cities are portrayed as living, breathing ecosystems, emphasizing Jacobs’s writing. It’s clear that Tyrnauer understands the city as Jacobs saw it.

For both, the city isn’t a lifeless collection of buildings; it’s the vibrant heart that beats in the people who live there.

Verdict-5-0-Stars

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Lock, Stock and One Smoking Sword

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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

by Hope Madden

Right, Guy Ritchie’s medieval-ish sorcery fable King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is bad.

But how bad is it?

Or more to the point, how Guy Ritchie is it?

The filmmaker mixes his trademark hypothetical-scenarios, quick-cut montages and period anachronisms with video game quality CGI, and it’s hard to decide which approach is more ill-suited to the material.

Or is the bigger issue the fact that this story – among the oldest, simplest, most re-told in the history of the English language – is befuddled beyond recognition once Ritchie and his team of co-writers have their way with it?

The film opens appealingly enough: King Uther (Eric Bana) hands his crown to his brother Vortigern (Jude Law) to hold while he single-swordedly defeats the villainous wizard Mordred – who controls super colossal elephant beasts with his mind!

This makes Jude Law’s nose bleed, so we know something’s up. Next thing you know, there are hungry sea-serpent siren things, Uther’s attacked, and little bitty Arthur finds himself floating Moses-like toward Londinium and the waiting arms of some golden-hearted prostitutes.

Flash forward through the first of several watch-him-become-a-man montages and Charlie Hunnam appears. Street savvy, tough, flippant and boasting what can only be the work of the most stylish barber in all of Londinium, he runs afoul of the king and accidentally pulls Excalibur from its stone. He’d just as soon put it back.

He’s reluctant! He doesn’t want all this! He’s just a regular guy – who looks like super-cut Charlie Hunnam and says things like “ya big, silly, posh bastard.”

And if you think he seems out of place in about-to-be-Arthurian England, check out Jude Law and his leather blazer and matching skinny jeans.

But what did you expect – that he wouldn’t Guy Ritchie this thing? It’s Game of Thrones meets Sherlock Holmes (the Ritchie version). And that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

The Arthurian legend can be a stiff slog, and a little shot of style could enliven things. Unfortunately, Ritchie buries every stylistic choice he makes under charmless and pace-deadening CGI.

It would take more than magic to save this thing.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

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Don’t Talk to Strangers

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Hounds of Love

by George Wolf

Driven by a fiercely invested and touchingly deranged performance from Emma Booth, Hounds of Love makes a subtle shift from horrific torture tale to psychological character study. In 108 grueling minutes, writer/director Ben Young’s feature debut marks him as a filmmaker with confident vision and exciting potential.

It is the late 1980s in Perth, Australia, and at least one young girl has already gone missing when the grounded Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) sneaks out her bedroom window to attend a party. This isn’t nearly as dumb a move as is accepting a ride from Evie White (Booth) and her husband John (Stephen Curry).

As the couple dance seductively and drink to celebrate, Young disturbingly conveys the weight of Vicki’s panicked realization that she is now their captive. It is just one in a series of moments where Young flexes impressive chops for visual storytelling, utilizing slo-motion, freeze frame, patient panning shots and carefully chosen soundtrack music to set the mood and advance the dreadful narrative without a spoken word.

And then, just when you might suspect his film to wallow in the grisly nature of the Whites’ plan for Vicki, Young turns to dialog sharp enough to upend your expectations, and three vivid characters are crafted in the suffocating dread of the White’s neighborhood home.

Slowly, Vicki realizes her best hope may be outsmarting the insecure Evie, and, much like Catherine Martin tempting Precious away from Jame Gumb, Vicki sets her sights on driving a wedge between her captors.

The three leads, all impressively committed, find the layers necessary to make the terror resonate more deeply than your standard dose of human cruelty. No slight to either Cummings of Curry, but the film turns on how Booth consistently finds the edges of Vicki’s psychotic worldview to make her the biggest wild card in this horror show.

No doubt, events get brutal, but never without reminders that Young is a craftsman. Subtle additions, such as airplanes flying freely overhead to contrast with Vicki’s captivity, give Hounds of Love a steady dose of smarts, even as it’s shaking your core.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

So that happened...

Price of Dignity < Price of Shampoo

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The Reluctant Volunteer

by Hope Madden

Years ago, we took the family tour of Orlando theme parks. Much to the chagrin of my son and me, my husband, George, declared this the vacation to volunteer. Every attraction in need of a villain to shoot Indiana Jones or a handsome prince to dance with the princess, George was their man.

I’m not a volunteer by nature. I like to mind my business in the stands and enjoy the show. Not that it actually matters to George. You see, at Nickelodeon Studios, when the emcee announced he was looking for “some brave soul to volunteer,” George’s hand shot up.

Then the emcee finished his sentence with the words “their spouse.”

Wait a minute, what?

I’d been volunteered.

They dressed us like giant beavers, or more specifically, like the “Angry Beavers” in the Nick cartoon. I swear to God. I wore a beaver head and tail and my team battled a squad led by a similarly, ridiculously clad George in building a dam using giant Lincoln Logs.

My team won. George remembers it differently.

What brings this memory back? George volunteered me again.

This time it was during a Columbus Clippers baseball game.

Barely into the first inning, as George and I were trying to tune out the annoying banter from the teenage date going on behind us, a representative from the Clippers’ promotion team approached me to enter a contest.

They needed three participants with long hair.

Move along, sir. This is not for me.

But George was so excited!

“What would she do?” he asked.

“She’d just need to pull her hair up into a hat, and then take the hat off,” he explained.

“You could do that!” George encouraged.

“I don’t want to do that.” I thought I’d been clear.

He pursued the issue. “What would she win?”

“A bottle of Pert,” explained the Clippers guy.

A bottle of Pert.

“Come on!” George urged. “We’re low on shampoo!”

George often persuades me to do things I don’t want to do just because of his giddy enthusiasm. But I also felt a little sorry for the Clippers guy who had to try to lure contestants to look like idiots, all for a $4 toiletry item.

Plus, George was right. We were low on shampoo.

I caved.

The staff was lovely. They even moved us to seats directly behind the dugout – despite the fact that George had just finished directing his loudness at the chatterbox teens, “I’ll buy you the damn lemonade if you’ll just stop talking!”

As we waited for the fourth inning, when the Clippers rep would return to lead me and two other contestants to the field, George coached me on how to make the most of my time in the spotlight.

He urged me to do my impersonation of Cousin It.

Sometimes, I’ll pull all my hair in front of my face and put a pair of sunglasses on top, transforming into the old “Addams Family” character. It’s a big hit with kids. It’s nothing I’m willing to do in front of several thousand people, however.

Eventually, the time came and I headed onto the field to face my fate. As they fetched me from our new seats, George shouted: “Do the Cousin It!”

And then he said, “Show no mercy! Don’t stop with shampoo. Hold out for the creme rinse!”

“It’s called conditioner, George,” I shot back. “We’ve talked about this!”

“C’mon, stay focused! Eye of the tiger!”

I ignored him, fearing a complete medley of 1980s “jock jams” was next.

As I walked to the holding area, I met the other contestants: Barbara, a cute blonde with her wee grandson in tow, and Mark, a sweet mountain of a man. Mark had more beard than I have hair, and on his head was a glorious mane: long, thick, shining, dense, gray and spectacular. I had no chance.

Clippers fans would vote by applause for their favorite contestant: Grizzly Adams, an adorable grandma with a cute kid or some lady who did not do the Cousin It.

I went home without the coveted bottle of Pert.

But at least no one dressed me like a beaver.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Best Half of 2017

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We are halfway through 2017 already – whew! It’s been a sucktastic year in many respects, but not when it comes to horror movie output. The young year has already seen so many great flicks that we had to leave some real gems off this list, but we’re pleased to say that Senior Filmmaking Correspondent Jason Tostevin returns to keep us honest.

5. The Girl with All the Gifts

It is the top of the food chain that has the most reason to fear evolution.

Isn’t that the abiding tension in monster and superhero movie alike? The Girl with All the Gifts explores it thoughtfully and elegantly – for a zombie movie.

So, what’s the deal? A horde of “hungries,” each infected with a plant-based virus, has long since overrun the human population. Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), her researchers and the military are holed up while trying to derive a cure from the next generation, like Melanie (Sennia Nanua) – the offspring of those infected during pregnancy.

But much of the film’s success sits on Nanua’s narrow shoulders, and she owns it. The role requires a level of emotional nimbleness, naiveté edged with survival instinct, and command. She has that and more.

Cirector Colm McCarthy showcases his bounty of talent in a film that knows its roots but embraces the natural evolution of the genre. It’s not easy to make a zombie film that says something different.

But what Girl has to say is both surprising and inevitable.

And she says it really, really well.

4. The Blackcoat’s Daughter

Winter break approaches at a Catholic New England boarding school. Snow piles up outside, the buildings empty, yet Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) remain. One has tricked her parents for an extra day with her townie boyfriend. One remains under more mysterious circumstances.

Things in writer/director Oz Perkins’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter quietly unravel from there – although quiet is not precisely the word for it. There is a stillness to the chilly, empty halls. But thanks to the filmmaker’s brother Elvis, whose disquieting score fills these empty spaces with buzzing, whispering white noise, a sinister atmosphere is born.

Perkins repays your patience and your attention. You can expect few jump scares, but this is not exactly a slow-burn of a film, either.

It behaves almost in the way a picture book does. In a good picture book, the words tell only half the story. The illustrations don’t simply mirror the text, they tell their own story as well. If there is one particular and specific talent Blackcoat’s Daughter exposes in its director, it is his ability with a visual storyline.

Pay attention when you watch this one. There are loads of sinister little clues to find.

3. Hounds of Love

Driven by a fiercely invested and touchingly deranged performance from Emma Booth, Hounds of Love makes a subtle shift from horrific torture tale to psychological character study. In 108 grueling minutes, writer/director Ben Young’s feature debut marks him as a filmmaker with confident vision and exciting potential.

It is the late 1980s in Perth, Australia, and at least one young girl has already gone missing when the grounded Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) sneaks out her bedroom window to attend a party. This isn’t nearly as dumb a move as is accepting a ride from Evie White (Booth) and her husband John (Stephen Curry).

As the couple dance seductively and drink to celebrate, Young disturbingly conveys the weight of Vicki’s panicked realization that she is now their captive. It is just one in a series of moments where Young flexes impressive chops for visual storytelling, utilizing slo-motion, freeze frame, patient panning shots and carefully chosen soundtrack music to set the mood and advance the dreadful narrative without a spoken word.

And then, just when you might suspect his film to wallow in the grisly nature of the Whites’ plan for Vicki, Young turns to dialog sharp enough to upend your expectations, and three vivid characters are crafted in the suffocating dread of the White’s neighborhood home.

No doubt, events get brutal, but never without reminders that Young is a craftsman. Subtle additions, such as airplanes flying freely overhead to contrast with Vicki’s captivity, give Hounds of Love a steady dose of smarts, even as it’s shaking your core.

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

2. Raw

What you’ll find in writer/director Julia Ducournau’s notorious feature debut is a thoughtful coming of age tale.

And meat.

Justine (Garance Marillier, impressive) is off to join her older sister (Ella Rumpf) at veterinary school – the very same school where their parents met. Justine may be a bit sheltered, a bit prudish to settle in immediately, but surely with her sister’s help, she’ll be fine.

Ducournau has her cagey way with the same themes that populate any coming-of-age story – pressure to conform, peer pressure generally, societal order and sexual hysteria. Here all take on a sly, macabre humor that’s both refreshing and unsettling.

In a very obvious way, Raw is a metaphor for what can and often does happen to a sheltered girl when she leaves home for college. But as Ducournau looks at those excesses committed on the cusp of adulthood, she creates opportunities to explore and comment on so many upsetting realities, and does so with absolute fidelity to her core metaphor.

She immediately joins the ranks of Jennifer Kent (Babadook) and Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) – all recent, first time horror filmmakers whose premier features predict boundless talent.

1. Get Out

Opening with a brilliant prologue that wraps a nice vibe of homage around the cold realities of “walking while black,” writer/director Jordan Peele uses tension, humor and a few solid frights to call out blatant prejudice, casual racism and cultural appropriation.

When white Rose (Alison Williams) takes her black boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet the fam, she assures him race will not be a problem. How can she be sure? Because her Dad (Bradley Whitford) would have voted for Obama’s third term “if he could.” It’s the first of many B.S. alerts for Peele, and they only get more satisfying.

Rose’s family is overly polite at first, but then mom Missy (Catherine Keener) starts acting evasive and brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) gets a bit threatening, while the gardener and the maid (both black – whaaat?) appear straight outta Stepford.

Peele is clearly a horror fan, and he gives knowing winks to many genre cliches (the jump scare, the dream) while anchoring his entire film in the upending of the “final girl.” This isn’t a young white coed trying to solve a mystery and save herself, it’s a young man of color, challenging the audience to enjoy the ride but understand why switching these roles in a horror film is a social critique in itself.

Get Out is an audacious first feature for Jordan Peele, a film that never stops entertaining as it consistently pays off the bets it is unafraid to make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2JbO9lnVLE

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Bon Appetit

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The Dinner

by Hope Madden

Enduring a dinner party – in cinematic terms, it can lead to a cathartic catfight (Carnage), mass suicide (The Invitation) or an all out apocalypse (It’s a Disaster).

It would appear that having to remain civil through such a meal causes us, as a civilization, a lot of anxiety.

Writer/director Oren Moverman (Rampart, The Messenger) ignites that discomfort and then looks at it from all angles with his newest, The Dinner.

Richard Gere – that silver fox – is Stan Lohman. A politician with a congressional race on the line and an important bill currently up for a vote, he’s juggling a lot right now. So why stop everything to join his brother Paul (Steve Coogan), along with Paul’s wife Claire (Laura Linney) and his own wife Katelyn (Rebecca Hall) for a 5-star meal?

Well, it isn’t good news.

The restaurant of choice is beyond posh, its lushly appointed dining rooms and obscenely laden tables a fascinating surrounding for the drama unfolding. When Moverman remains with his primary foursome inside this restaurant, an involving and curiously repellant morality play unfolds.

Moverman has a particular talent – one that these veterans relish. He scripts characters who are rarely entirely what they appear at first blush, never go where you expect them to go, and somehow wind up being the same and yet remarkably different than what you’d imagined.

This kid of layered challenge can prove too much for many actors, but Hall, Coogan, Gere and especially Linney are custom made for such work. Indeed, in many respects these actors are superior to their material.

Linney and Hall suffer from underwritten characters, which is a shame because both find something primal under all their characters’ studied polish.

Gere is breezily at ease as the smooth politician, convincing himself and others of his genuineness as he works the room.

Coogan is the standout surprise, playing against his traditionally comedic type as the enigma in the middle of this conundrum.

Suffice it to say, the couples have a parental nightmare to contend with, and it’s when Moverman brings in flashback to enlighten the audience that his drama begins to lose its way. Mix in some additional flashbacks to illuminate Paul’s character, including an excruciating Civil War sequence (we get it – sibling rivalry – enough already!), and the slow film comes to a stand-still.

It’s a frustrating way to spend an evening, The Dinner, but not a waste of time. Every member of the cast has a moment of brilliance working with a script that also shines in fits and spurts.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Awesome Mixtape: Side 2

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Three years ago, James Gunn and Marvel became superfriends, making use of inspired casting, crisp writing and some classic 70s jams to make Guardians of the Galaxy the most fun to be had at the movies in 2014.

But is that second mixtape ever quite as awesome as the first? Rarely, and that’s the Catch-22 of the original film’s surprising blast of space zaniness. While we never saw that one coming, this new one arrives with weighty expectations.

No, Volume 2 can’t match the ruffian charm of the first, and there are some stretches of not-much-happening-here. But Gunn’s sequel shares a lot of heart, swashbuckling visuals and more than a few solid belly laughs.

But please, stop trying to make Howard the Duck happen.

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt, rugged everyman dufus) and his band of misfits-for-hire run into some troubles here and there across the galaxy. Yondu (Michael Rooker – hooray!) and his crew of Ravagers are still on their tail, and some pompous gold people from Sovereign (so they’re “Sovereign citizens” – well played) want Rocket dead.

But all might be well when Quill finally meets his father, Ego (who else but Kurt Russell?) and learns the surprising news of his lineage.

What – a comic book movie inspired by daddy issues? Stop it!

It may be a logical character arc for Quill, but when one too many tragic backstories build at the expense of fun, the running time starts feeling a bit bloated. Good thing Gunn has a fine instinct for when enough is about to become too much, pivoting from the dramatics with dazzling derring-do or exactly the right gag.

He also knows we’re already invested in these characters, and doesn’t mind spending some of the capital he earned last time out.

Bradley Cooper again offers ripe sarcasm as the voice of Rocket, but Dave Bautista is the breakout comedy anchor of GOTGV2. As the hulking Drax, Bautista’s booming guffaws or deadpan one-liners are a consistent treat. Zoe Saldana’s Gamora seems the odd Guardian out, too often given little more to do than deny Quill’s claim that they’ve got a “Sam and Diane unspoken thing” goin’ on.

And then there’s Groot (Vin Diesel).

As a baby.

Baby Groot.

For the win.

There are more great classic hits to re-discover (or, for you kids, get to know), including a fantastic piece of action set against the backdrop of…wait for it…Jay and the Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer.” Stingers? Oh, yes, during and after the credits, so just plan on staying around til the staff sweeps you out with the candy wrappers.

Does Guardians 2 seem like a rehash? Sure, at times, and there’s never any doubt whoever’s shooting at our heroes is bound to have horrible aim. But when a rehash serves up this much wit, eye candy and escapist fun, you know what they say….

“I am Groot.”

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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Life Sucks and Then You Die

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A Quiet Passion

by Cat McAlpine

Writer/director Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea) delivers a film on Emily Dickinson that is visually brilliant (for the most part) and textually weak. Ironic.

The struggle, surely, with writing a historically rooted film is that certain events must happen, in a certain order, and you’re responsible for the connective tissue. Unfortunately, A Quiet Passion doesn’t have much connective tissue, and it is grating as a result.

There are brilliantly tense moments between family members, witty retorts, a blatant rejection of organized religion, and even a saucily smashed dinner plate, but none of these aggressions fester into anything larger. At one point, sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle, fantastic) chastises “Now things will be tense for days.” We don’t see any of those days.

Cynthia Nixon (Sex in the City) is perfectly awful as the aging Emily, but in earlier scenes she grins her way through acerbic words with the most bizarre delivery.

This isn’t the film’s only stylistic disparity. Visually, A Quiet Passion is a treat. The lighting is gorgeous, with equal time spent on sunny lawns and in shaded bedrooms. The color is rich too, especially for a film of its type.

But, somewhere near the middle, the narrative encounters the Civil War. In this moment real photographs of the event are shown on screen as voiceovers float in with disconnected commentary on the war. A few of the pictures are oriented horizontally, leaving the rest of the screen black. It looks like, and I hate to say this, at worst a PowerPoint Presentation and at best a History Channel special.

A Quiet Passion has drawn praise as a solidly feminist film. If the latest definition of feminism is a main character who doesn’t marry, I hazard to say we can ask for more. Emily doesn’t seem to put off marriage for art, but rather has little romantic interests to begin with. There’s one failed attempt at adultery, one briefly interested party, but she is never more than bitter. Emily wails that she’s simply too ugly.

No man ever tells her she can’t write. In fact, Emily politely asks her father’s permission if she could please write during the early morning hours while everyone else is still sleeping.

This film is carried by its beautiful cinematography and its smart camera work, but even that leaves something to be desired.

Like Emily Dickenson’s own poetry, with its characteristic dashes, A Quiet Passion is disjointed and a bit difficult to interpret.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?