A raunchy comedy that peels away all the precious nonsense associated with motherhood and isn’t afraid to get a bit nasty – this feels like a film that’s been a long time coming. It could be a welcome change of pace if done well. Unfortunately, instead we got Bad Moms.
Mila Kunis stars as an overworked, underappreciated, harshly-judged parent. Her husband’s useless, her boss is a joke, and she’s so irredeemably responsible that her life is spiraling out of control. Either that or she is such an overtly clichéd image of every potential mom complaint that no actor could possibly make her a human.
Kunis has strong comic sensibilities, as do the performers playing her two new besties, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn. Hahn’s the unrepentant man- and booze-hound of a single parent, while Bell’s Kiki is the socially awkward stay-at-home mother of 4. Together they have great fun doing all the things no one wants to see their mom do – and thank God for it, because the rest of the film is worthless.
This is a world where not one father contributes. OK, maybe one – but he’s a hot widower, so there’s no mother to help out. Awwww….
The film is co-written and co-directed by Hangover franchise creators Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, but they could have seriously used an assist from Bad Moms co-star Annie Mumolo. Mumolo co-wrote 2011’s Bridesmaids, a film that was capable of producing female-centric comedy with dimension. Even men.
I’m confident that there are times when every parent feels incompetent, where every well-planned family vacation turns into fodder for your child’s first adult conversation with a therapist. Bad Moms brings up loads of great, universal points that will pick those scabs. Unfortunately, the resolution to those issues is always convenient and one-sided to the point of being offensive.
Bad Moms is trying to offend your sensibilities, but it succeeds in the wrong spots. The lengthy sight gag concerning sex with an uncircumcised penis – not offensive, just funny. The problem is the rest of the movie.
At no point in the film Bad Moms is the word “parent” used. Every problem, every responsibility, every joy and obstacle is the sole property of the mom. I’m sure it can feel that way at times, but good comedy rarely comes from such a one-dimensional premise. It certainly doesn’t do so here.
Ohio-based filmmaker Robert Bates will bring two short slices of local film noir to the newly-renovated Drexel Theatre Wednesday night, July 27th.
The Reckoning, Bates’s latest, will see its world premiere at the event, while Recoil unveils a new “enhanced” version with an alternate ending.
Both films began as entries in competitions sponsored by the Mid Ohio Filmmakers Association (MOFA). Recoil, part of MOFA’s 72-hour speed filmmaking contest from 2012, was tailored for the contest sub-genre known as “Hard-boiled Detective,” and Bates says the new enhanced version was planned almost immediately.
“Even before the MOFA screening, I knew I wanted to create a deluxe version of Recoil with a better ending. So barely two weeks after we wrapped the competition shoot, I wrote a new ending, and the Recoil team shot a new ending, and the post-production team ‘polished’ the editing and sound design to a higher level, even before the awards had been announced for the competition.”
The Reckoningwas meant to be a horror film…then quickly became something else.
“This was for a three-week MOFA competition for horror films in 2014,” Bates explains, “but I found I just couldn’t bring myself to do horror, so I went with my gut feeling and made a Twilight Zone -meets-noir kind of story.”
It is a style of film that seems to come naturally to Bates.
“I’ve only directed six short films so far — I didn’t get started in dramatic narrative filmmaking until 2010 — I’m still looking for my ‘voice’ as a writer-director. I seem to be drawn to stories involving crime, drug addiction, and moral crises. Noir seems to scratch that itch nicely. All I know is I had a blast making Recoil and The Reckoning.”
The films begin at 6pm at the Drexel, 2254 E. Main St., with a Q&A session to follow, featuring Bates along with members of his cast and crew.
War is hell, which makes it obvious fodder for horror films. It’s kind of amazing there aren’t more that really mine the carnage and insanity of battle, but those that do it well can make social commentary while getting under the audience’s skin. The films we celebrate today do both really well, plus – monsters! Hooray!
5. The Devil’s Backbone (El espinazo del diablo) (2001)
The Devil’s Backbone unravels a spectral mystery during Spain’s civil war. The son of a fallen comrade finds himself in an isolated orphanage that has its own troubles to deal with, now that the war is coming to a close and the facility’s staff sympathized with the wrong side. That leaves few resources to help him with a bully, a sadistic handyman, or the ghost of a little boy he keeps seeing.
Backbone is a slow burn as interested in atmosphere and character development as it is in the tragedy of a generation of war orphans. This is ripe ground for a haunted tale, and writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s achievement is both contextually beautiful – war, ghost stories, religion and communism being equally incomprehensible to a pack of lonely boys – and elegantly filmed.
Plus the ghost looks awesome. Del Toro would go on to create some of cinema’s more memorable creatures, and much of that genius was predicted in the singular image of a drowned boy, bloody water droplets floating about him, his insides as vivid as his out.
Touching, political, brutal, savvy, and deeply spooky, Backbone separates del Toro from the pack of horror filmmakers and predicts his own potential as a director of substance.
4. The Crazies (1973, 2010)
We’re cheating here, but George Romero’s 1973 insanity plague flick offers much, as does its 2010 reboot by the otherwise useless Breck Eisner, so we’re combining.
Just three years after Night of the Living Dead, the master found himself interested in taking his zombiism concepts in a different direction. Romero is more literal in his thoughts on the Vietnam War in this film than in his previous efforts. Two combat veterans are at the center of the film, in which a chemical weapon is accidentally leaked into the water supply to a Pennsylvania town. Those infected go helplessly mad. Military incompetence, the needless horror of Vietnam, and the evil that men can do when ordered to do so are all central conceits in this film.
Romero may not have always had the biggest budget, best actors, or best eye for composition, but his ideas were so far ahead of their time that modern horror would not exist in its current form without him. His ideas were unique, not far-fetched, and they fed the imaginations of countless future filmmakers. You can see Romero’s ideas and images from this film repeated in 28 Days Later, Return of the living Dead, Signal, Cabin Fever, Super 8, even Rambo – and, obviously, in the remake.
Eisner’s version offers solid scares, inventive plotting, and far better performances than expected in a genre film. Both films begin by articulating humankind’s repulsion and fear of infection before introducing the greater threat – our own government. Eisner’s greatest strength is his cast. The eternally under-appreciated Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, unerringly realistic as husband and wife, carry most of the grisly weight, aided by solid support work from folks who are not afraid to be full-on nuts.
3. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Jacob’s Ladder is as unsettling and creepy as any movie you’ll watch. The entire 113 minutes transpires in that momentary flash between life and death, with both light and dark trying to make a claim on Jacob Singer’s soul.
Tim Robbins plays Singer with a weary sweetness that’s almost too tender and vulnerable to bear. In a blistering supporting turn, Elizabeth Pena impresses as the passionate carnal angel Jezebel. The real star here, weirdly enough, is director Adrian Lyne.
Known more for erotic thrillers, here he beautifully articulates a dreamscape that keeps you guessing. The New York of the film crawls with unseemly creatures hiding among us. Filmed as a grimy, colorless nightmare, Jacob’s Ladder creates an atmosphere of paranoia and dread.
By 1990, the Vietnam film has run its course, but with some distance from the post-Platoon glut, the “flashback” crisis that underlines Singer’s confused nightmare feels less stale. It allows the movie to work on a number of levels: as a metaphysical mystery, a supernatural thriller, and a horror film.
2. Dog Soldiers (2002)
Wry humor, impenetrable accents, a true sense of isolation, and blood by the gallon help separate Neil Marshall’s (The Descent) Dog Soldiers from legions of other wolfmen tales.
Marshall creates a familiarly tense feeling, brilliantly straddling monster movie and war movie. A platoon is dropped into an enormous forest for a military exercise. There’s a surprise attack. The remaining soldiers hunker down in an isolated cabin to mend, figure out WTF, and strategize for survival.
This is like any good genre pic where a battalion is trapped behind enemy lines – just as vivid, bloody and intense. Who’s gone soft? Who will risk what to save a buddy? How to outsmart the enemy? But the enemies this time are giant, hairy, hungry monsters. Woo hoo!
Though the rubber suits – shown fairly minimally and with some flair – do lessen the film’s horrific impact, solid writing, dark humor, and a good deal of ripping and tearing energize this blast of a lycanthropic Alamo.
1. 28 Days Later (2002)
You know you’re in trouble from the genius opening sequence: vulnerability, tension, bewilderment, rage, and blood – it launches a frantic and terrifying not-zombie film. Like zombie god George Romero, though, director Danny Boyle’s real worry is not the infected, it’s the living.
Boyle uses a lot of ideas Romero introduced, pulling loads of images from The Crazies and Day of the Dead, in particular (as well as Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder).
The vision, the writing, and the performances all help him transcend genre trappings without abandoning the genre. Both Brendan Gleeson and Cillian Murphy are impeccable actors, and Naomie Harris is a truly convincing badass. Their performances, and the cinematic moments of real joy, make their ordeal that much more powerful.
It’s a tribute to the performances, Boyle’s direction, and writer Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) vision that, even after a dozen or so terrifying set pieces, the most deeply unsettling scene is a quiet conversation between ragged survivor Jim (Murphy) and his alleged salvation, Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston).
In a blue-white landscape where form follows function, director and story writer Drake Doremus must choose between head and heart. He chooses heart, every time.
I’ve seen some parallels drawn between this film and 1984 (fair) or Romeo and Juliet (a bit of a stretch). Is any story wholly original? No. Does Equals borrow? Yes. And if I were to point fingers, I’d look to Lois Lowry’s “The Giver.”
In “The Giver,” a young boy learns to feel pain and passion, to serve as his community’s vessel for the humanity that has been anesthetized. It’s not until he discovers color in a red apple that you realize, already half-way through the text, that the author has not used a single colored adjective. The world until that point has been flat, black and white.
The lesser film adaptation betrays this wonderment and horror in its added visual dimension, shooting for the most in grayscale.
In Equals, a remaining fraction of the human race lives in a community called The Collective. They have been genetically engineered to not feel emotion. Their DNA, lobotomized. However, emotion does surface in what Collective leaders warn is a dangerous disease called “Switched on Syndrome.” Those with advanced stages are encouraged to kill themselves, or are otherwise contained and dealt with at The Den.
Early scenes are shot in harsh white with moody blue undertones, but when Silas (Nicholas Holt) and Nia (Kristen Stewart) discover each other, and love, the color palate shifts. Oranges and reds appear, in flares, and in the film’s coloring as a whole. Purples emerge where the two moods meet. Paired with a beautiful lighting design, all tortured silhouettes and sets filled with glass and steel, the imagery is powerful. Not unlike black and white versus color, Doremus toys with red versus blue.
Unfortunately, Equals is so enchanted with its own aesthetic that it almost stands still. My heart ached but my mind wandered. The same white industrial sets begin to wear on the viewer in hour two, and while Holt and Stewart give powerful performances, it is hard for them to shine in some of the more drab settings.
Stewart, in particular, is fantastic as Nia. Despite Doremus’s melodramatic intentions, she is never over-the-top and always justified. If we are still making the same jokes about Stewart’s ability to emote, let them be finally laid to rest. She is raw and believable. I sincerely doubt she took this role without contemplating the image Twilight earned her, and if this is her middle finger to those critics, I salute it.
If you consider this as a film, a visual exploration of the human heart, Equals is stunning. In keeping the same white sets and pacing at a slow burn, the color theory shines. The lighting design is moving. The concept of discovering feeling in an emotionless landscape is beautiful and heart-wrenching.
If you consider this as a movie, an hour and a half journey that feels like three, you will find yourself bored. Equals is not overly cerebral, but promises adventures that never come. An unsure ending stays true to the themes of emotion and heart, but will leave viewers uncomfortable and longing. It’s hard to say if this is intentional.
Paired with the rest of the box office, gritty action packed adventures and dirty, drunk comedies, Equals may very well fade quietly into the background.
Kirk. Spock. Bones. Wisecracks, a villain, and some heroic space swashbuckling. We’re pretty familiar with the Star Trek setup by now, and three flicks into the J.J. Abrams-fueled reboot, the latest seems the most comfortable in its journey. And though Star Trek Beyond doesn’t quite boldly go, it is a fun, satisfying ride.
Three years into a five-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise stops for some downtime at an immense new space station. Kirk (Chris Pine) in awaiting a promotion, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is mulling a return home to Vulcan, and Bones (Karl Urban), good God, man, he has some fun needling Spock about a botched romance with Uhura (Zoe Saldana).
The gang gets back in action to answer the distress call of a stranded crew, but falls into the trap of the Kahn-like Krall (Idris Elba), who’s after a very powerful artifact that Kirk just happens to be holding.
Fast and Furious vet Justin Lin takes over for Abrams in the director’s chair and, working with a snappy script co-written by Simon Pegg (“Scotty”), has the film feeling like a fun Trek TV episode beamed up to the multiplex.
Though the adventure is a little tardy getting its legs, things only get better as they go along. The banter is crisp, the derring-do daring, and the chemistry of the ensemble, so important in a franchise such as this, is undeniable.
Spectacular only in spots, what Beyond does best is honor its own heritage while planning for the future. The nods to its TV past run from cheesy to ingenious, even finding a clever way to acknowledge the effect the entire Star Trek phenomenon has had on popular culture.
After the trying-too-hard reach of Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond strikes just the right note. More of this? I’m on board.
Sandwiched between his adorable vampire flick What We Do in the Shadows and his upcoming journey into the Marvel universe, Thor: Ragnarok, director Taika Waititi gets lost in the New Zealand bush.
The Kiwi filmmaker, whose career up to now has been marked with silly wit and gentle humor, offers a buddy comedy along the lines of Pixar’s Up.
Rotund Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) finds himself deep in New Zealand nowhere with his newly appointed foster parents Bella (Ti Waita, wonderful) and Hec (Sam Neill). Bella offers and endless amount of genuine care, while Hec is quick with a grunt or a grimace. But one mishap after another projects the wrong image, and soon the lonesome boy and grumpy old man are off on an exotic adventure.
The manhunt that follows Ricky and Hec into the woods offers plenty of opportunity for sight gags, and Waititi (who adapted Barry Crump’s novel) gives the comedy an equal dose of absurdity and sweetness.
A mash note to outsiders, family and masculinity, Wilderpeople also showcases Neill’s gravelly talent in a way no film has done in years. Truth be told, were it not for the strong performances from the two leads, the film could easily have become stiflingly quirky. But Neill’s work offers more layers and authenticity than your usual grizzled coot routine, and Dennison’s confidence and timing ensure his is not the same old adorable kid looking for a dad.
No, both characters are equal parts frustrating and charming, which is why the adventure works as well as it does. There’s no wink and nod “let’s learn a lesson” backbone to their quest, just an admirably naive sense of freedom.
The supporting cast in its entirety delivers wry laughs, but the real showstoppers are Waita (who was equally enjoyable in Housebound), and Rachel House as Paula, the alarmingly tenacious social worker.
The script veers toward sentimentality once or twice too often. Like Waititi’s previous features, Wilderpeople, in the end, lacks bite. But the filmmaker possesses such an extraordinary talent for good natured, quirky comedy that it will be really something to see what he can do with a super hero, and whether his sincerely individual vision can remain intact.
There is something cathartic in watching the brazenly wrong-headed Eddie Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and her enabling bestie Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) of Absolutely Fabulous make bad decisions. This summer, they take their Bollinger, ciggies, Botox and bags of coke to the big screen. The result is Moderately Fabulous.
The British sitcom has enjoyed sporadic but popular runs on BBC since the early Nineties. Saunders – who also writes – pokes fun at celebrity culture while she and Lumley offer a master course in physical comedy, onscreen chemistry and unseemly humor.
Will the boozy duo’s quest for the swingin’ celebrity life ease as they sashay into their sixties? Of course not.
Eddie’s PR firm has fallen on hard times. Her champagne fridge is empty and her credit cards are “broken.” What she needs is one big client. Good luck! Kate Moss is between PR agents. If Eddie and Patsy can finagle a meeting at the upcoming fashion show without knocking Moss into the Thames and drowning her, setting off a social media frenzy, not to mention an all-out police manhunt, they’ll be back in the Bolly in no time.
Though the plot is almost painfully thin, padded with a veritable cameo-gasm (the highlight of which is a hilarious Jon Hamm), Saunders keeps the raucous one-liners flowing. And their wisdom is, as usual, spot on.
Tough night of boozing and pill popping? Freshen up with a little spritz of after birth.
Don’t think of family members as attachments. “They’re parasites, ticks, danglers.”
And the best advice yet: “Avoid the Jacuzzi – it’s a smoothy of old sperm.”
Yes, these are still the most delightfully horrible people in the world, and Ab Fab is at its best when it remembers this. Their generational issues are not meant to be resolved lovingly, wistful moments of regret are antithetical to their credo, and God knows no lesson should ever be learned.
Unfortunately, Saunders does not abide by these laws entirely. Director Mandie Fletcher can’t hide the threadbare script behind a runway’s worth of cameos, either. Like so many cinematic sit-com adaptations, Absolutely Fabulous would have played better on the telly. But thanks to Saunders and, in particular, the comedic genius of Lumley, you will laugh.
Writer/director Mickey Keating says his newest effort, Carnage Park, owes a debt to Sam Peckinpah and Peter Watkins – and their influence is certainly apparent, right down to the film’s title, cribbed from Watkins’s desert terror Punishment Park. Still, the film itself boils down to a poor man’s Wolf Creek as directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Actually, that sounds a lot better than it is.
It’s the California desert of 1978. Two armed men carrying a bullet wound, bag of cash and hostage flee a small town bank heist. They lose a trail of cops via a hidden, hilly dirt road.
Big mistake.
All the swagger, dusty boots and retro Seventies soundtrack in the world can’t shield Scorpion Joe (James Landry Hebert) and farm girl hostage Vivian (Ashley Bell) from the much larger danger they’ve just driven into.
Keating’s amassing quite a list and variety of indie horror films. His style is homage. Where Carnage Park aspires to the gritty look and desperate feel of the road pics of the indie American Seventies, last year’s Darling offered a stylish ode to both Kubrick and Polanski.
This approach need not feel derivative. Let’s be honest, Tarantino’s become among the most lauded and watched filmmakers of his generation by doing the exact same thing. The big difference is that QT’s take on all the cinema that has come before is filtered through his own lunatic genius, the final product becoming uniquely, fantastically his own.
There’s something more workmanlike, less inspired in what Keating does.
That’s not to say Carnage Park is an abject failure. A game cast keeps the film intriguing. Bell is deceptively savvy (aside from a few wildly idiotic mistakes, but let’s be honest, screenwriter Keating is to blame for those). Genre favorite Pat Healy chews some scenery, playing against type as the damaged Vietnam vet cliché, while Larry Fessenden (a regular and welcome contributor to Keating’s canon) shows up for a quick and gory moment or two.
But from the bleached out yellow of the scenery to nearly every set piece, Keating’s habit of lifting from other films takes on the feel of compulsion. Larceny, even: The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Reservoir Dogs – the list is bloody, hip and endless. And tired.
Keating has proven many strengths in his few years in filmmaking, but it is time for him to develop his own style.
While fright fans continue to argue about the merits of art house horror vs. torture porn, there is another option in 2016. Make America grab their dates again! And just like a convention speech that sounds awfully familiar, Lights Out limps off as a promising platform derailed by borrowed ideas and intermittent ridiculousness.
There aren’t many phobias more basic than a fear of the dark, and Director David F. Sandberg had nifty fun with it in his Lights Out short film from 2013. He gets a producer assist from James Wan (The Conjuring, Insidious) for his big screen debut, and though the opening segment does offer the same spark as that original short, expanding the premise to a mere 81 minutes brings more filler, less killer.
Young Martin (Gabriel Bateman) is increasingly scared to stay in his own house, since his mother (Maria Bello) talks to unseen beings and strange things happen whenever the lights go out. Martin’s older sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) is contacted by social services, and she’s instantly reminded of similar trauma from her own childhood. Rebecca sets out on a determined quest to finally uncover the truth about what’s hiding in the dark….which ends after opening the first storage box she sees.
Thanks for neatly organizing all this evidence, Mom! Now how do I get rid of it?
For those tired of all the love art house horror has been getting, Lights Out is your anti-Witch. It’s all about the jump scares, in a universe where major plot turns are explained by “something went wrong” and no one seems to have a job. Don’t think about it, just…boo!
It’s all obvious and mildly jolting, with none of the creepy polish evident in Wan’s own catalog. Sandberg does find some authenticity, though, in his cast. The reliable Bello is effectively sympathetic and Palmer, despite a string of lackluster performances, finally shows the promise of a genuine actor.
Though the bloodletting is always minimal in PG-13 horror, these films can still be effective. The Ring showed they can even be great, and screenwriter Eric Heisserer clearly agrees, which becomes increasingly evident as the structure of his backstory is revealed.
The finale is as abrupt as it is unsatisfying, and though Sandberg flashes chops worthy of a better script (he is directing Wan’s Annabelle 2 next year) Lights Out merely flickers.
Since Bonnie and Clyde and probably before, cinematic lovers on a bloody rampage have been entertaining and freaking out audiences the world over. Their escapades can be as grimly beautiful as Terrence Malick’s incandescent Badlands, or as bloody as – well, as the films we celebrate today. Dangerous lovers can really build a body count, as you’ll see here. Ain’t love grand?
5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Here’s a bizarre idea for a musical: The barber upstairs kills his clients and the baker downstairs uses the bodies in her meat pies. Odd for a Broadway musical, yes, but for a Tim Burton film? That sounds a little more natural.
As in most of Burton’s best efforts, Sweeney Todd stars Johnny Depp in the title role. Depp is unmistakably fantastic – consumed, morose, twisted with vengeance – and he’s in fine voice, to boot.
Helena Bonham Carter – ever the perfect Goth girl – gives Mrs. Lovett a wicked survivor streak balanced by a tender, pining affection. The romance dream sequence is a riot, and so perfectly Burton-esque. The two actors offset each other brilliantly, while their onscreen duo deserves credit for efficiency, if nothing else.
With Burton’s help, Depp found another dark, bizarre anti-hero to showcase his considerable talent. With Depp’s help, Burton gorgeously, grotesquely realized another macabre fantasy.
4. Hellraiser (1987)
Hedonist Frank Cotton solves an ancient puzzle box, which summons the fearsome Cenobites, who literally tear Frank apart and leave his remains rotting in the floorboards of an old house. Years later, Frank’s brother Larry moves into that house with his teenage daughter Kirsty and his new wife Julia (Clare Higgins) – who, oh yeah, also happens to be Frank’s ex-lover.
A gash on Larry’s leg spills blood on the floor, which awakens the remains of Frank, who then requires more blood to complete his escape from the underworld. Julia, both repulsed and aroused by her old flame’s half-alive form, agrees to make sure more blood is soon spilled.
Though the Cenobites are the real, lasting terror in this film – and how cool were they! – the sexual chemistry between Julia and that bloody lump of Frank is never less than unsettling. Higgins makes the perfect evil stepmother while redefining the term blood lust.
3. Sightseers (2012)
From the guttural drone of the opening segment, this film announces itself as a dryly, darkly hilarious adventure. Frumpy Tina (Alice Lowe, perfection) needs a break from the smothering mum who blames her for their dog’s death. Against Mum’s wishes, Tina will take a road trip with her new beau, the equally frumpy Chris (Steve Oram, amazing).
The film is a wickedly fresh British take on a familiar theme. Oram and Lowe wrote the script, alongside director Ben Wheatley’s go-to scribe (and wife) Amy Jump. The result is so absurd and hilarious – few films have had so much fun with moral ambiguity.
Wheatley blends the dark comedy of his first film, Down Terrace, with the sense of the unexpected that elevated Kill List to create enormously entertaining homicidal madness. It helps that his cast could not be better, draining all the glamour of the road trip assassin couple trope without relying on that as a gimmick. There’s a deeply British weirdness to the proceedings, which are handled with bone-dry aplomb by all involved.
2. The Hunger (1983)
Tony Scott’s seductive vampire love story has a little bit of everything: slaughter, girl-on-girl action, ’80s synth/goth tunage, David Bowie. What more can you ask?
Actually the film’s kind of a sultry, dreamily erotic mess. Catharine Deneuve is the old world vampire Miriam, David Bowie is her lover. The two spend years – perhaps centuries – together seducing victims. But he suddenly begins aging, and she needs to find a replacement. Enter Susan Sarandon as a medical specialist in unusual blood diseases and a fine actress who’s not above smooching other girls.
Bowie and Deneuve are both so effortlessly cool and sexy that you can almost forgive them their nighttime savagery. You find out just how dangerous he is once he begins the rapid-aging process, but once you get a peek into Miriam’s attic you find that she’s been far more dangerous – to her lovers and everyone else – for a very long time.
1. Alleluia (2014)
In 2004, Belgian writer/director Fabrice Du Welz released the exquisite Calvaire, marking himself a unique artist worth watching. Ten years later he revisits the themes of that film – blind passion, bloody obsession, maddening loneliness – with his newest effort, Alleluia. Once again he enlists the help of an actor who clearly understands his vision.
Laurent Lucas plays Michel, a playboy conman who preys upon lonely women, seducing them and taking whatever cash he can get his hands on. That all changes once he makes a mark of Gloria (Lola Duenas).
Du Welz’s close camera and off angles exaggerate Lucas’s teeth, nose and height in ways that flirt with the grotesque. Likewise, the film dwells on Duenas’s bags and creases, heightening the sense of unseemliness surrounding the pair’s passion.
Duenas offers a performance of mad genius, always barely able to control the tantrum, elation, or desire in any situation. Her bursting passions often lead to carnage, but there’s a madcap love story beneath that blood spray that compels not just attention but, in a macabre way, affection. Alleluia is a film busting with desperation, jealousy, and the darkest kind of love.
