Raw talent is a rare find. Ophir Kutiel, or Kutiman as he’s known, realizes this. That may be why he spends countless hours scouring YouTube, pulling this guitar solo and that piano concerto to mash into one of his globally admired compositions.
With Samantha Montgomery he found more than the usual diamond in the rough. Her YouTube feed oscillates between confessional monologues and heartfelt, powerful acapella songwriting. What she posts as Princess Shaw to her small online audience is vulnerable and emotionally fearless, her story of artistic and emotional struggle becoming both timeless and utterly of this moment.
Following the two artists as their work collides is Ido Haar’s documentary Presenting Princess Shaw. It’s a refreshingly unadorned look at the lonely life of an artist.
The core story contains everything that makes a documentary wonderful. There are things here you probably did not know existed – like Kutiman’s truly wonderful art, for instance, a form of composition that is fascinating to watch being made.
There is also the secret admirer angle, the underdog tale, the story of an artist being discovered, all of which are themes that can be easily manipulated into a compelling film regardless of form.
And so Haar is to be congratulated for his craftsmanship, utilizing all the themes available to him to compel the audience’s attention while simultaneously creating a raw aesthetic that matches Princess Shaw’s own material.
How authentic is his film? It’s hard to know how Haar ended up filming the songstress at the exact moment she learns of Kutiman’s intervention, but if her emotional response is faked, she’s as strong an actor as she is a songwriter.
As impossible as it is to watch this film without rooting for success and riches to find Princess Shaw, the film itself is more of a celebration of artistry as its own often painful, internal, and emotional reward – catharsis or therapy, even. It’s also a beautiful tribute to artistic camaraderie.
What harm could come from accepting a Facebook friend request from a person you don’t recognize? For Calvin Joyner, that answer is a lot.
Calvin, portrayed by the talented Kevin Hart, is a forensic accountant who has recently been passed up for a promotion and isn’t eager to attend his twenty year high school reunion with his high school sweetheart, now wife, Maggie (Danielle Nicolet). The reunion is just a reminder for Calvin that his life has not turned out the way he thought it would when he was voted Most Likely to Succeed his senior year of high school.
Into Calvin’s mundane existence comes Bob Stone (Dwayne Johnson). Bob is a former classmate of Calvin’s who finds him on Facebook and quickly inserts himself into Calvin’s life. When Calvin meets Bob for a drink to reconnect, he is stunned to see Bob has transformed himself from an overweight, bullied loser into a well-muscled, attractive man who likes guns and unicorns.
Hart and Johnson have a natural chemistry and they play well off each other, with Hart frequently playing the straight man to Johnson’s nerdy, overly eager Bob. Hart plays Calvin as a good-natured guy who recognizes that Bob needs a friend, even if he is frequently confused by Bob’s geeky references to Sixteen Candles and 90’s pop culture.
It’s because of his good nature that Calvin finds out exactly when can happen when you reconnect with an old classmate. Bob asks Calvin for a favor, and that favor leads Calvin into a world of espionage, shootouts with CIA agents, and an adventure he didn’t expect or want.
The supporting cast, particularly Amy Ryan and Danielle Nicolet, are able to play off the odd couple duo of Hart and Johnson with skill. Ryan Hansen provides a number of jokes as Calvin’s inappropriately raunchy co-worker. The only actor who seems slightly out of his league is Aaron Paul. Though Paul is a skilled actor, he can’t quite seem to hold his own against Hart or Johnson.
Even with a runtime of almost two hours, the film never drags and the comedy is strong throughout. Though the ending feels contrived and the film follows a fairly standard formula, on the whole, it works as a mismatched, buddy comedy.
The strength that Johnson and Hart bring to the screen elevates the film to a level above your standard, forgettable comedy fare.
Thirteen years later and Finding Nemo has a sequel. Finding Dory takes place a year after father and son triumphantly reunite with the aid of memory-challenged Dory. Now Dory is feeling restless, gnawed at by flashes of the family she lost. She’s ready to take an apprehensive Marlin and an enthusiastic Nemo on a quest to find her parents that sends them across the Pacific Ocean to the Marine Life Institute—an aquarium specializing in the rehabilitation and release of a wide variety of adorable sea creatures.
Like Nemo, Dory is voiced by an incredible cast of actors: Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), Albert Brooks (Marlin), Ed O’Neill (Hank the curmudgeonly octopus), Kaitlin Olson (Destiny the nearsighted whale shark), Ty Burrell (Bailey, the beluga with confidence issues), Diane Keaton, and Eugene Levy (Dory’s parents). Other celebs provide cameos, including an amazing effort by Sigourney Weaver.
The movie is predictably beautiful, frenetic in pace, and often hilarious, but is also emotionally devastating. It hooks you right in the heartstrings from the moment child Dory asks her parents, “What if I forget you? What if you forget me?” This is followed by a montage of a lost, lonely baby asking strangers if they’ve seen her parents.
(As a mom of a 2-year-old too young to attend the screening, I had to claw my seat to avoid speeding home to envelop her in a bear hug.)
Having a few more ominous scenes than Finding Nemo, and a PG rating, take your little ones’ sensitivity to heart before heading into the theatre for this one. But if you can handle the assault on the feels, rest assured that Pixar has, once again, delivered a whale of a tale. (And the preceding short, “Piper”, ain’t no slouch either.)
Why captivity horror? Because we want to talk about Lucky McKee’s amazing The Woman, and this seemed like a good excuse. McKee’s must-see horror joins a host of incredible films that explore our fears of being held against our wills as they look at the ugliest side of human nature. Plus, cookies. Fun!
5. Cube (1997)
Making his feature directing debut in 1997, Vincenzo Natali, working from a screenplay he co-wrote, shadows 7 involuntary inmates of a seemingly inescapable, booby-trapped mazelike structure. Those crazy Canucks!
Cube is the film Saw wanted to be. These people were chosen, and they must own up to their own weaknesses and work together as a team to survive and escape. It is a visually awe inspiring, perversely fascinating tale of claustrophobic menace. It owes Kafka a nod, but honestly, stealing from the likes of Kafka is a crime we can get behind.
There is a level of nerdiness to the trap that makes it scary, in that you know you wouldn’t make it. You would die. We would certainly die. In fact, the minute they started talking about Prime Numbers, we knew we were screwed.
What Natali was able to accomplish within the limitations he has – startlingly few sets, a very small cast, a 20 day shoot schedule – is astounding. An effective use of FX, true visual panache, and a handful of well-conceived death sequences elevate this far above Saw and many other films with ten times the budget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37EjGw7jV98
4. Compliance (2012)
Compliance is an unsettling, frustrating and upsetting film about misdirected and misused obedience. It’s also one of the most impeccably made and provocative films of 2012 – a cautionary tale that’s so unnerving it’s easier just to disbelieve. But don’t.
Writter/director Craig Zobel – who began his career as co-creator of the brilliant comic website Homestar Runner (so good!) – takes a decidedly dark turn with this “based-on-true-events” tale. It’s a busy Friday night at a fast food joint and they’re short-staffed. Then the police call and say a cashier has stolen some money from a customer’s purse.
A Milgram experiment come to life, the film spirals into nightmare as the alleged thief’s colleagues agree to commit increasingly horrific deeds in the name of complying with authority.
Zobel remains unapologetically but respectfully truthful in his self-assured telling. He doesn’t just replay a tragic story, he expertly crafts a tense and terrifying movie. With the help of an anxious score, confident camera work, and a superb cast, Zobel masterfully recreates a scene that’s not as hard to believe as it is to accept.
3. Green Room (2015)
Young punk band the Ain’t Rights is in desperate need of a paying gig, even if it is at a rough private club for the “boots and braces” crowd (i.e. white power skinheads). But when bass guitarist Pat (Anton Yelchin) accidentally witnesses a murder in the club’s makeshift green room, band and concertgoer Amber (a terrific Imogen Poots) find trouble. They’re held at gunpoint while the club manager (Macon Blair from Blue Ruin) fetches the mysterious Darcy (Patrick Stewart, gloriously grim) to sort things out. Though Darcy is full of calm reassurances, it quickly becomes clear the captives will have to fight for their lives.
As he did with Blue Ruin, writer/director Jeremy Saulnier plunges unprepared characters into a world of casual savagery, finding out just what they have to offer in a nasty backwoods standoff. It’s a path worn by Straw Dogs, Deliverance, and plenty more, but Saulnier again shows a knack for establishing his own thoughtful thumbprint.
And yet, Saulnier manages to let some mischievous humor seep out, mainly by playing on generational stereotypes. Poots, barely recognizable under an extreme haircut and trucker outfit, has the most fun, never letting bloody murder alter Amber’s commitment to bored condescension. Love it.
It’s lean, mean, loud and grisly, and a ton of bloody fun.
2. The Woman
There’s something not quite right about Chris Cleek (an unsettlingly cherubic Sean Bridgers), and his family’s uber-wholesomeness is clearly suspect. This becomes evident once Chris hunts down a feral woman (an awesome Pollyanna McIntosh), chains her, and invites the family to help him “civilize” her.
The film rethinks family – well, patriarchy, anyway. Notorious horror novelist and co-scriptor Jack Ketchum may say things you don’t want to hear, but he says them well. And director Lucky McKee – in his most surefooted film to date – has no qualms about showing you things you don’t want to see. Like most of Ketchum’s work, The Woman is lurid and more than a bit disturbing.
Aside from an epically awful performance by Carlee Baker as the nosey teacher, the performances are not just good for the genre, but disturbingly solid. McIntosh never veers from being intimidating, terrifying even when she’s chained. Bridgers has a weird way of taking a Will Ferrell character and imbibing him with the darkest hidden nature. Even young Zach Rand, as the sadist-in-training teen Brian, nails the role perfectly.
Nothing happens in this film by accident – not even the innocent seeming baking of cookies – nor does it ever happen solely to titillate. It’s a dark and disturbing adventure that finds something unsavory in our primal nature and even worse in our quest to civilize. Don’t even ask about what it finds in the dog pen.
1. Oldboy
So a guy passes out after a hard night of drinking. It’s his daughter’s birthday, and that helps us see that the guy is a dick. He wakes up a prisoner in a weird, apartment-like cell. Here he stays for years and years.
The guy is Min-sik Choi. The film is Oldboy, director Chan-wook Park’s masterpiece of subversive brutality and serious wrongdoing.
This is not a horror film in any traditional sense – not even in South Korean cinema’s extreme sense. Though it was embraced – and rightly so – by horror circles, this is a refreshing and compelling take on the revenge fantasy that takes you places you do not expect to go. But that’s the magnificence of Chan-wook Park, and if you have the stomach, you should follow where he leads.
Choi takes you with him through a brutal, original, startling and difficult to watch mystery. You will want to look away, but don’t do it! What you witness will no doubt shake and disturb you, but missing it would be the bigger mistake.
Join us for a live Fright Club podcast taping and screening the second Wednesday of every month at Gateway Film Center!
Video game movies rarely if ever work. Has the problem been lack of talent? Assassin’s Creed will feature Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, and Splinter Cell will star Tom Hardy. Maybe leveraging honest to god talent will be enough to meld these seemingly similar art forms? Or is the impending onslaught of high profile gamer flicks just an opportunity to waste some of cinema’s greatest working artists?
Warcraft, directed by one of our most exciting new filmmakers, Duncan Jones, is not the harbinger we were hoping for.
It’s a medieval fantasy with Orcs, dwarves, elves, bearded magicians – basically it’s a movie based on a series of video games that amount to little more than Lord of the Rings fan fiction. But if anyone can turn this into a worthwhile cinematic experience, it’s Jones. Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011) proved his mettle with fantasy and action, and showed him to be an inventive craftsman.
Though Warcraft proved too great a task, even for him.
Gaudy CGI and caricatured performances rob the film of any chance to pull the viewer in – the video game itself looks about as realistic. Weak writing by Jones and Charles Leavitt (who’s never written anything worth seeing) doesn’t help matters. When solid actors, including Ben Foster (who needs to fire his agent), look ridiculous delivering this faux-archaic dialog, what chance does a hack like Paula Patton have?
Patton plays Garona, halfbreed slave to the magic-wielding Orc Gul’Dan. When she’s captured by the humans, will she betray them, or has she finally found her clan? And will she be wooed by Travis Fimmell’s bizarre Paul Rudd impression as the knight Lothar?
The plotting itself just makes you sad – so much time is wasted setting up sequels that will never, ever happen. Worse, the visuals are clumsy, particularly compared to cinema’s history of onscreen Orcs.
Warcraft makes it impossible not to draw comparisons to Peter Jackson’s trip to Middle Earth. To say Jones’s effort pales by comparison is like saying American politics has taken an odd turn.
Now You See Me 2 tells us “the best tricks work on many levels,” while the film itself works best when it digs no deeper than embracing the fun of its own ridiculousness.
And it is plenty ridiculous.
Part one struggled not only because magic tricks seem less amazing in a medium already built on visual amazement, but because it just took itself way too seriously. New director John M. Chu, a veteran of such strong social commentary as Jem and the Holograms and Justin Beiber’s Believe, abandons all pretense for a glitzy, Oceans 11-style caper full of cons, wisecracks, and one strange Matthew McConaughey impersonation.
Since we left the Four Horsemen, Henley (Isla Fisher) has been replaced by Lula (Lizzy Caplan), who openly lusts for Jack (Dave Franco) while Merritt (Woody Harrelson) and Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) wonder when Dylan (Mark Ruffalo), the ringleader working both sides as an FBI agent, will give them another assignment.
They eventually get one, but it comes from billionaire tycoon Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), who wants the Horsemen to rectify the financial pain their last gig caused him by stealing an incredibly powerful new piece of computer technology. It all gets much more convoluted, weaving in returns for both Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, and serving up the coup de grace of Harrelson, in an “old man pubes” wig and fake teeth, going full McConaughey to play his own twin brother.
By that point, you’re not far from the unhinged universe where John Travolta and Nicholas Cage exchange faces, so none of the preposterous plot turns in Ed Solomon’s script should be taken too seriously.
Enjoy the flash and likable cast, stop wondering why the title isn’t “Now You Don’t,” and give in to the moments of over-the-top fun that Now You See Me 2 brings center stage.
Just don’t expect anything of substance behind the curtain.
The thing that made James Wan’s 2013 ghost story The Conjuring so effective – more than the solid cast, more than the tense atmosphere, more than those hideous Seventies fashions – was Wan’s use of practical effects.
That woman on top of the wardrobe?! Terrifying!
It helped that he had a creepy story in the hands of capable actors. More importantly, he knows how to frame scenes in a way that trains the audience to scan corners, peer into shadows and look through empty windows, constantly on edge waiting for that next spooky moment.
With his sequel, he still boasts two of those three elements.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return as Lorraine and Ed Warren, real-life paranormal investigators working with the Catholic church to validate claims of hauntings and possessions. It’s 1977, and the two are still recovering from that incident in Amityville when they’re asked to help a single mum with four kids living in North London.
The put-upon family is sympathetic enough. Wilson and Farmiga are compelling enough. The period detail is nice. Well, The Clash’s London Calling wasn’t actually released until 1979, but all is forgiven because of the utterly fantastic use of Starsky & Hutch posters.
So, what’s wrong with C2?
A few things.
The story never feels particularly cohesive – more like a series of vignettes strung together. Because of this, characters never seem fully formed and relationships feel forced. Supernatural clues and plot twists border on the nonsensical. (Seriously, ask yourself about the bite marks.) Maybe that’s because there’s a red herring, but too much valuable time is wasted with that thread and not enough devoted to true scares.
There are two demonic images in the film – both excellently chosen nightmare images from childhood (mine, anyway) – but some video game editing and CGI identify them quickly as movie magic, leeching their power.
Most importantly, there’s no inspired, memorable, terrifying jump scare. Wan is an absolute master of the spooky longshot, the creeping camera, but in this film’s predecessor those unendurably tense spans were punctuated by some of the best spook house scares in recent memory. Think clapping hands.
Though there are some startles and above-average scares, there’s nothing to elevate this film above mediocrity.
Believe it or not, there are those around the world who do not think first of a football team when they think of Columbus, Ohio. For those folks, and for many who are unaware of CBUS fabulousness, filmmaker Gabrielle Burton has a story to tell.
“Columbus has got to be the crown jewel of drag in the Midwest.”
So says one of a slew of gender performers captured mid-hair spray and duct tape in a comprehensive and broad look at drag performance in Ohio. Burton’s doc Kings, Queens & In-Betweens follows two troupes – the Royal Renegades and the West Family – to capture a far more varied set of entertainers than you’re likely to find in another documentary on the same topic.
Regularly punctuated with fun and impressive performance clips, the film unveils more than the traditional bouffant and stiletto glory of the drag queen, introducing drag kings, transgender performers, and a full spectrum of subcategories within those broader performance types.
It’s an interesting direction to take, and one that opens up the conversation and likely shares new information with an audience who may not be familiar with the variety of performers in the drag world. It helps that Burton’s subjects are not just entertaining onstage, but open and generous in quieter moments as well.
Burton builds the documentary on the theme of separating concepts of sex, sexuality, and gender designation, which provides her film a bit of complexity missing in other docs on gender performance. Subjects’ sometimes surprising candor offers a compelling emotional weight, particularly when they discuss issues of safety.
Aided by the infusion of live performance, the effort never feels weighed down or preachy. Burton balances her clear effort to create an informative film with just enough wit, eye liner, facial hair and Pam cooking spray.
All of which is grounded in what many would consider an unexpected setting. As one entertainer puts it:
“Columbus is this fantastic gay snow bubble in the middle of Ohio.”
A staple of the horror genre – the final girl. She’s been beaten, tied up, duct taped, stabbed and generally misused, but she soldiers on. Whether through virtue, savvy, or just general badassedness, these women are not above doing what’s necessary to make it through to the sequel – even if that means putting on Jason’s dead mother’s moth-eaten sweater, because that shit had to be gamey. So today our Senior Aussie/Slasher Correspondent Cory Metcalfe joins us again to celebrate the best final girls in horror.
6. Erin (Sharni Vinson – You’re Next, 2011)
Erin is Australian, which is clearly the deciding factor here. She joins her boyfriend for a family holiday in a gorgeous vacation home deep in the woods. Which sounds worse, the first meeting with the family or “deep in the woods”? In her case, that is seriously a toss-up. The gathering is disrupted by violent, mask-wearing psychopaths, but they weren’t prepared for Erin.
Erin’s one of the few at the event who’s new to the family, so she’s hard for the villains to predict. And we find that her boyfriend – a college prof who dates his students, including Erin – doesn’t know nearly enough about her. It’s a great tale of unreasonably low expectations. It’s also, a great character because Erin is savvy, tough, and fearless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgkxIlw5HWw
5. Mia (Jane Levy – Evil Dead, 2013)
With the helpful pen of Oscar winner Diablo Cody (uncredited), Fede Alvarez turns all the particulars of the Evil Dead franchise on end. You can tick off so many familiar characters, moments and bits of dialog, but you can’t predict what will happen.
One of the best revisions is the character of Mia: the first to go and yet the sole survivor. She’s the damaged one, and the female who’s there without a male counterpart, which means (by horror standards), she’s the one most likely to be a number in the body count, but because of what she has endured in her life she’s able to make seriously tough decisions to survive – like tearing off her own damn arm. Nice!
Plus, it rains blood! How awesome is that?!
4. Sarah (Shauna McDonald – The Descent, 2005)
Sarah is another one who appears to be the weak link but proves her meddle. She suffers an almost unendurable tragedy in the opening scene, and a year later, when she and her friends regroup to spend a holiday together spelunking in West Virginia, she appears to be the delicate one. What she goes through in the early part of the film informs her ability to survive – as her friend Beth points out (to her and to us) when Sarah gets caught in the narrow tunnel.
She’s quiet and observant, smart and proactive – all excellent qualities once we find out that the group is not only lost inside an unmapped underground cave with no hope of being found, but that the cave already has residents, and dude! Are they creepy!
The way Sarah evolves, and the turns the character and the film take, are surprising and impressive.
Back in 1974, the “final girl” formula hadn’t been perfected. The slasher genre barely even existed, but Tobe Hooper already knew how to play with genre expectations. Yes, Sally Hardesty is the sweet one, the pretty one, the one likeliest to be the last in line for that chainsaw, but there’s a lot more to her than halter tops and bell bottoms.
Marilyn Burns mines for something primal in this performance, which is absolutely necessary if we’re to believe this girl has what it takes to survive the cannibal family. Sally’s mania is recognizable, necessary to the viewer. No one is yelling advice or judgement at the screen because who in the hell could possibly know what to do in this situation?
Unlike so many female characters in horror before her and since, Sally doesn’t whimper and rely on the villain’s conscience to save her. She negotiates, and when she realizes that’s getting her nowhere, she makes tough choices (like throwing herself out a window – because no fate could be worse than the one that clearly awaits her otherwise). In keeping with the film, Burns’s performance is gritty, unpleasant, insane and perfect.
2. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis – Halloween, 1978)
In 1978, Laurie Strode became the definition of “final girl” in much the same way that Carpenter’s horror masterpiece became the definition of slasher – the blueprint for the genre. For many, Jamie Lee Curtis’s girl-next-door is the ultimate final girl.
There’s great reason for that. She distilled everything that came before and became the model for what would come after in the slasher film: virtuous, smart, self-sacrificing. But Curtis does it with more intelligence and onscreen grace than those before or (mostly) after in the slasher genre. She’s virtuous, but not judgy. She’s hot, but not overtly so. She’s also brave and smart.
The reason the character transcended genre trappings to become iconic is not the writing or the film itself, but Curtis’s performance. An effortless intelligence shines through regardless of Laurie’s actions, and it elevates the film and the genre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKvxAvkJkac
1. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver – Alien, 1979)
Who could possibly push Laurie Strode to second place? Ellen Ripley could.
Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien and its many sequels is a savvy, tough, no-nonsense survivor. She is clearly the smartest member of the Nostromo crew: she understands chain of command and values quarantine regulations; she’s the first to recognize Ash (Ian Holm) as a villain; she understands the need to blow the ship; she outsmarts the predator.
Her sexuality is beside the point, which is entirely refreshing in this genre and for the role of final girl. She also changed the game for “final girls.” No longer could we accept a beautiful, sobbing mess who made ridiculous decisions, refused to fight back, and survived based entirely on her virtue. Ripley is never a victim, rarely makes an uninformed decision, and kicks all manner of ass. That’s why she survives. She’s not hoping to be saved, she’s just doing what it takes to get the F out of Dodge and keep Earth safe.
I admit it, I’ve laughed at The Lonely Island videos. “I’m On a Boat?” “Captain Jack Sparrow” with Michael Bolton? “I Just Had Sex?” All funny. “Dick in a Box?” Classic. Even the cover of their Turtleneck and Chain album is chuckle-worthy.
The nice thing about those projects is they all last about three minutes or less. With Popstar, Andy Samberg and his best buds (Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone) have feature length ambitions, but only prove that even a slight 86 minutes is excessive.
Samberg stars as Conner4Real, the worldwide pop sensation who hit it big in the Style Boyz with childhood buddies Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer), only to leave them behind when solo stardom came calling. After a smash debut album, Conner’s plans for an encore shape Popstar‘s mockumentary approach to lampooning the absurdity of today’s pop music scene.
The irony, of course, is the very level of that actual absurdity makes parody even more difficult.
Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had the same problem poking fun at the idiocy of political pandering in The Campaign, and The Lonely Island boys (who both write and direct) can’t find a satisfying thread to connect all their new tunes. There are some hits here, such as “Equal Rights (I’m Not Gay),” an overtly sexual love song called “Bin Laden” and “Incredible Thoughts (featuring the return of Bolton),” but the project feels too much like a soundtrack in search of a movie.
Or, more pointedly, a series of SNL skits dreaming of the multiplex. In that vein, there are guest stars and cameos galore, including Will Arnett leading a priceless sendup of the obnoxious TMZ “newsroom.”
Any music scene mockumentary is bound to live in the shadow of This Is Spinal Tap, and The Lonely Island does acknowledge that challenge with a couple winking homages. But the laughs are rarely sustained and never go to 11 (sorry), and Popstar becomes a fairly forgettable tune.
