A Night at the Opera
The Crow
by George Wolf
The Crow may not be over when the phat lady sings, but the film’s truly galvanizing moments are here and gone, leaving the rebooted super anti-hero story to return to its largely generic nature.
Director Rupert Sanders and a writing team that includes James O’Barr (from the 1994 original) keep the basic narrative intact. After the troubled Eric (Bill Skarsgård)and his equally troubled love Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered by henchman of the centuries-old Mr. Roag (Danny Huston), Eric travels through the worlds of the living and the dead on a bloody quest for revenge and possible salvation.
Though Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell) gives more attention to the origins of the love story, the “soul mate” declarations still feel rushed and unearned. The entire narrative embraces more of a nihilistic tone, with just one moment of the angsty self-awareness that buoyed the first film.
The camerawork is often nimble and expressive, but Sanders and cinematographer Steve Annis (Color Out of Space) move away from crafting any unique, comic-inspired landscapes. Instead, the colliding worlds come to resemble a very dark, long-abandoned section of any major midwestern metropolis.
But, man, when we crash that opera, The Crow lands on its feet and kicks ass, as Eric takes on a barrage of goons and gunfire with a stunning, visceral brutality. Well-staged and perfectly flanked by the performance onstage, the extended sequence benefits from impressive choreography and effects work, giving the film its only truly memorable moments.
The rest of The Crow has a difficult time measuring up.
Fantasy Island
Blink Twice
by Hope Madden
Zoë Kravitz is pissed off.
Nice.
In her directorial debut, Kravitz—working from a script she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum—delivers an intoxicating and haunting thriller about privilege.
Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody) is Frida, a waitress with a huge crush on disgraced-but-apologetic billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum). When he invites her and her best friend Jess (the always welcome Alia Shawkat) to his private island, both accept without a second thought.
It’s all rich guys and delicious food, pools and cocktails, drugs and sun. What Frida can’t quite figure out is why Slater never seems to make a move.
What transpires feels influenced by the classic The Stepford Wives, as well asJulia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. The ideas are less borrowed than repeatedly, historically true and Kravitz reconsiders these timeless notions with an unerringly contemporary sensibility and a mean spirit that’s earned.
Ackie’s solid in a role that asks a lot. She’s surrounded by lively, creepy performances that perfectly animate the superficial, manufactured joy of the story being told. Adria Arjona impresses in a role with more arc than most. Meanwhile, both Christian Slater and Red Rocket’s Simon Rex steal scenes left and right.
Still, it’s Tatum who effortlessly bridges horror fantasy with “damn, this could really happen.” His morally blurry turn, charmingly evil, has such authenticity to it that the island horror feels more like a reflection of reality than it should.
Should you board an airplane for a tropical island with a bunch of wildly rich people you’ve never met before? Good lord, no. Nothing good could possibly come of that. Kravitz’s horror story could easily have become a cautionary tale in less skilled hands, but that is not the story she’s telling.
Blink Twice, which was originally titled Pussy Island, covers really horrible territory, but again, thanks to nimble and respectful direction, there’s not a gratuitous moment. What Kravitz delivers instead is a seductive, tense, satisfying thriller.
Slow Burn
Catching Dust
by Eva Fraser
Catching Dust is a film that makes you think. It lays out the end at the beginning, picking up the pieces as it goes.
Writer/director Stuart Gatt creates a masterful story that analyzes the inner motivations of regular people under the pretext of an intriguing, slow-burn thriller. In a sparsely inhabited stretch of desert in Texas, Clyde (Jai Courtney) and his wife Geena (Erin Moriarty) live away from society, hiding out from the law.
With tensions on the rise and Geena wanting more, they tangle themselves in a web of secrets and desires that only worsen with the unexpected arrival of another couple (Dina Shihabi as Amaya and Ryan Corr as Andy). As the desert winds swirl around them, everyone begins questioning what love means.
As intense and raw as the desert, the small but poignant cast holds the film up to its highest standard through stunning performances. Each actor digs deep and creates a connection to the audience. Jai Courtney stuns as Clyde. His performance is so packed with realism that it is impossible not to sympathize with him and view his side of the argument, even though he is clearly a possessive and manipulative character.
The most interesting part of this film is that you can see each character as a potential villain. There is a protagonist, but there are times when you doubt it. The exciting part of this thriller is the actual mystery of it all rather than fear. There isn’t some sinister omniscient presence lurking in one of the characters— it is in all of them.
The variable, heated, and ever-changing emotions of these characters contrast with the stagnant landscape of the desert. The only thing that changes is the wind.
Cinematographer Aurélien Marra finds a common thread between the characters and the desert and runs with it. Marra captures the vastness and loneliness of the desert in landscape shots surrounding powerful sequences. Most importantly, the emotional temperature of each scene is meticulous. Each scene shot in Clyde and Geena’s trailer, a hotspot for conflict, blazes through the screen. Scenes in Andy and Amaya’s trailer are cooler and more blank, but the desert heat never fails to permeate the shot.
Whether you love drama or are an avid thriller buff, Catching Dust satisfies many palates. No matter what you think of the film, it sticks in your mind, those desert landscapes melding with a feeling of unsteady calm, a dry heat, a torturous hot summer’s day.
A Sloppy Mess
The Clean Up Crew
by Hope Madden
Jon Keeyes has made a lot of movies, none of them very good. Generally, his films star two actors you’ve heard of and wish were in better films. Sometimes, only one of those two have talent.
The Clean Up Crew stars a couple of Keeyes veterans—the always fun Antonio Banderas (who was in Cult Killer from the same director earlier this year) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who seemed to have talent at one time and also starred in Keeyes’s 2021 effort The Survivalist.
Plus, we get a bonus actor who should be getting better roles, Oscar winner Melissa Leo. Leo and Meyers play one half of a crime scene clean-up crew, alongside drug addled PTSD sufferer Chuck (Swen Temmel), and Meagan (Ekaterina Baker), who’s hoping a sudden windfall will mean that she and Alex (Meyers) can get married.
That windfall is the briefcase full of cash that was left behind at the crime scene they’ve been hired to clean up. It belongs to crime lord Gabriel (Banderas), and he wants it back.
The script by Keeyes’s longtime collaborator Matthew Rogers delivers a solid enough premise and bursts of humor, but nothing holds together. The Clean Up Crew feels like several different movies nonsensically stapled together.
The nonexistent rapport among the characters goes a long way to emphasize the disjointed narrative. At no point do you believe any one of these humans has feelings for any of the others, certainly not that one would risk life and limb for another. It’s not that they don’t seem to like each other as much as they don’t seem to know each other well enough to not hello at Kroger’s.
Meyers may as well be in an entirely different film. Banderas—who likely filmed his scenes over a weekend in a single location far from everyone else—basically is in a different film. His is more fun because, to his credit, the actor seems to be doing what he can to enjoy himself.
Leo struggles mightily with her curious Irish brogue, and no one scene predicts the next in any logical way. Keeyes can’t decide whether or not to treat the violence as comedy, but it certainly appears from nowhere and builds to a showdown no one really wants that delivers no type of narrative satisfaction.
The Clean Up Crew is a comedy that’s not funny, a thriller with no thrills, and a flat action flick sutured together into a dizzyingly incoherent paycheck for a few actors who deserve better, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Stranger Danger
Strange Darling
by Adam Barney
“Are you a serial killer?” A question usually asked in jest during a first date, but you still judge your date’s facial response as they answer. Was that a nervous laugh? Did that smile come too easy? We’ve all seen too many episodes of Dateline. Strange Darling kicks off with this question and that’s the top of the hill for the cat-and-mouse roller coaster thriller that follows.
Strange Darling will be best experienced if you can see it cold. Avoid the trailer if you can. The reveals and twists are a big part of the fun. This review will be as spoiler-free as it can be.
Writer/director J.T. Mollner (Outlaws and Angels) sets the stage with the serial killer question and then we see how the date unfolds over six chapters and an epilogue. The chapters are shown out of order, each providing new background, character motivations, and other reveals. This structure is highly effective and keeps you engaged for the breezy 96-minute runtime.
The twists are fun, but Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher) and Kyle Gallner’s (Smile, Dinner in America) performances are the best part of the movie. Their character names are archetypes and could be considered spoilers, so I’m avoiding them. The two have a natural chemistry and deliver all the attraction, fear, and rage the story requires.
Fitzgerald has a career-best turn here, and is the centerpiece of the whole film. Because we see the chapters out of sequence, she has to serve as the conduit to whatever is unfolding at the start of each. Every episode reveals more about her, and her performance really builds thanks to this structure.
I have a friend who, as far as I’m concerned, is the president of the Kyle Gallner fan club. I was lucky enough to see this movie with her, and she confirms that it is top-tier Gallner. He’s able to effortlessly walk the tightrope that exists between charming and dangerous, and that’s precisely what a movie like this requires.
Giovanni Ribisi takes a step away from acting and serves as the cinematographer. He and Mollner have an obvious affection for film as they shot Strange Darling in 35mm. The warm tones highlight the rustic backgrounds and a neon-lit conversation in a truck. Ribisi has a knack for capturing the nuances of the performances while still framing a visually rich shot.
Strange Darling does not reinvent the wheel. You’ll walk out of it and instantly want to talk about other movies that have similar elements, characters or plots. What it sets out to do, it does really well— like a favorite meal made by a loved one, it’s familiar and you’ve had it before, but damn if it isn’t delicious.
Demanding Acknowledgment
Sugarcane
by Rachel Willis
The history of residential schools, not just in North America but around the world, is one of insidious genocide. Children stolen from their families and communities, forbidden to speak their language or practice their religion – endorsed by governments in an attempt to “kill the Indian, save the man.”
Directors Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kasie examine the legacy of one such Canadian school in their documentary, Sugarcane.
Noisecat has a personal connection to the St. Joseph Mission residential school, which was in operation until 1981. His father, Ed Archie Noisecat, was born there. Ed’s story, along with his mother’s, centers the film on Julian and Ed’s attempt to examine the past and the impact of St. Joseph’s, not only on the Noisecat family, but on the communities affected.
Interviews with the survivors of St. Joseph’s speak to terrible cruelty inflicted on them at the hands of priests. Documents reveal that many of those working at the school knew of the abuse but either stood aside or simply asked that offending priests be moved to another school. A nun pleads with the Church to remove a priest, as she cannot continue to “guard the children’s morality.”
The documentary delves deeply into the continued impact of the school on the community. Many of the survivors cannot talk about their experiences, others speak to their experience as if they were simply observers of the crimes committed against them.
Peppered throughout the film is archival footage of the schools. One impactful scene shows a nun presiding over dozens of young girls, kneeling beside their beds and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Another shows a priest leading his “flock” of children, painting a picture of serenity and love. It’s a deceptive picture – one made to hide the true nature of these schools.
Sugarcane is hard to watch. A content warning at the beginning of the film only prepares the viewer for some of the atrocities spoken of. The stories told speak to an almost unthinkable level of viciousness. The unfortunate truth is that too many turned a blind eye to the crimes as they happened. Only now is a reckoning occurring in which there is a level of acknowledgement to the horror to which so many children were subjected.
However, the film is not without hope. Several scenes show that the religion and language of the culture survives. Sugarcane is a crucial piece of our history, one that demands acknowledgment.
Time to Check Out – For Good!
Stream
by George Wolf
Violence and cameos. It’s not a bad business model – just ask Deadpool & Wolverine.
Stream offers a steady stream of both, inside a rollicking blend of familiar tropes and beloved icons that should make Gen X horror fans positively giddy .
Linda Spring (the legendary Dee Wallace) owns a cozy hotel in the Pennsylvania countryside, and it’s finally ready for the big reopening. Perfect timing, because Roy and Elaine Keenan (Charles Edwin Powell, scream queen Danielle Harris) need a vacation. So they round up their gaming-obsessed son (Wesley Holloway) and boundary-testing daughter (Sydney Malakeh) and head for the hills.
But not long after checking in with Mr. Lockwood (Re-Animator‘s Jeffrey Combs), the Keenan family finds themselves in danger of checking out permanently. Four masked murderers are gleefully hunting the hotel guests, and competing for creative kill points in a sadistic competition that’s being streamed for wagering.
Director and co-writer Michael Leavy (a producer on Terrifier 2) keeps the body count high and the welcome practical effects in focus, with obvious nods to The Purge, Cabin in the Woods and more as the hotel guest list reveals more fan favorites from horror and beyond.
There’s Tony Todd, Bill Moseley and Felissa Rose! Plus, Tim Reid (WKRP), Terry Kiser (Weekend at Bernie‘s), Mark Holton (Francis from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) and more to keep you pointing at the screen like DiCaprio in that one meme.
None of this is very original or profound, and the two-hour running time would definitely benefit from a more firm editing hand. But if you’d gladly trade all that for more cameos and bloody, nostalgic fun, Stream delivers a satisfying getaway.
The Screening Room: Alien: Romulus, Didi, My Penguin Friend, The Union, Jackpot! & More
Hug It Out
Alien: Romulus
by George Wolf
2013’s Evil Dead proved that director Fede Alvarez could honor what made a franchise iconic, and still blast it with some new vitality. For me, his is the best in the deadite series.
No, I’m not saying Romulus is the new king of the Alien mountain, but it sits pretty comfortably at number three, right after the first two.
And it’s between those first two films that Alvarez, co-writing again with Rodo Sayagues, carves out a memorable place in the franchise timeline, two decades after the Nostromo crew answered what they thought was a distress signal.
We still fall in with a group of weary contractors from the Weyland-Yutani Corp., but this time they are twentysomethings who have grown up on a grim mining colony and never seen the sunlight. Rain (Cailee Spaeny, solid) and her brother Andy (a terrific David Jonsson) lost their parents “three cycles ago,” and it’s become clear that the chances of ever earning their release from Weyland-Yutani are slim to none.
But her friends Tyler (Archie Senaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Aileen Wu) have a plan.
They steal the decommissioned Weyland ship that’s docked on the Romulus space station, reboot its hyper sleep program, and set off on a nine-year journey to a new life on a planet with sunshine.
But there’s something else waiting on Romulus. You know.
And Alvarez taps into what we know early and often, creating that instant layer of tension that comes from new characters discovering the “perfect organism” we’re already plenty familiar with. That familiarity also means there’s no need to spare the monster rum, so prepare for plenty of brutal alien action that harkens back to the glorious sci-fi horror of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 film.
The technical craftsmanship (save for one curiously shaky effect I won’t spoil) is stellar, as well. Alvarez leans on the expertise of cinematographer Galo Olivares (Roma) and sound designer Lee Gilmore (Prey, Dune: Part One) to create another gritty, foreboding aesthetic that reeks of desperation and terrifying breaks of silence.
As Rain and her crew start learning what they’re up against, Alvarez shifts gears to mirror the clock-ticking adventure thrills that James Cameron wowed us with in 1986’s Aliens. So yes, you will be reminded of past glory, but Romulus also has some clever and refreshing ideas of its own.
One of those is an ingenious twist on Alien lore that is so tense and visually compelling it is hard to believe we haven’t seen it before. Bravo. On a more philosophical level, the script is able to develop a fascinating contrast between humans and their “synthetic” counterparts, exploring how quickly some acid blood can change the nature of expendability.
But this is not another rumination on the Engineers and why they engineered. Romulus is back-to-franchise-basics, giving us a little more insight into the Corporation’s endgame with a reveal that leads to one humdinger of an Act Three.
And it’s how you accept what is waiting there, along with the film’s amount of fan service (for me, it’s one callback too many), that should cement your feelings about Romulus.
Credit Alvarez for another win. He knows what made this franchise work, and how to make it work again. Alien: Romulus is relentlessly tense, consistently thrilling, and one thoroughly crowd-pleasing ride.
