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A Time to Kill

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Aporia

by Brandon Thomas

Most time travel movies don’t get into ethical dilemmas that going into the past – or future – might cause. The plot is usually too confusing anyway so adding moral problems to the mix might send audiences screaming from the theaters. With Aporia, director Jared Moshe makes the ethics of time travel the centerpiece of the movie and to riveting results. 

It’s been 8 months since Sophie (Judy Greer of 13 Going on 30, Ant-Man, and 2018’s Halloween) lost her husband, Mal (Edi Gathegi of X-Men: First Class and Gone Baby Gone) to a drunk driver. Mal’s loss has had a devastating impact on Sophie and her daughter Riley (Faithe Herman). As the two try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, Mal’s close friend Jabir (Payman Maadi) confides in Sophie that he has been working on a device that could potentially bring Mal back but that it would involve killing someone else in the past. 

Aporia slowly reveals its cards, or genre trappings, if you will. Stylistically the film skews closer to an indie drama than it does sci-fi. This is also the film’s greatest strength. As Sophie and Jabir’s changes to the past take form in the present, it’s not through fancy CGI set-pieces. Clever changes in production design or the cast’s appearance are utilized to showcase the ripple effect in time. These easy gags help keep the film grounded. Moshe refuses to get lost in the complex mechanics of the story, instead leaning into the characters and the roller coaster of emotions they ride through the film. 

The deeper Aporia questions the ethics of changing time, the more interesting the film becomes. Using these characters to ask complex questions about grief and responsibility was clearly where Moshe felt most inspired when making the film. Movies use the scenario of going back in time to kill baby Hitler as the ultimate moral time travel question. Aporia theorizes that this question – and many like it – doesn’t always have simple answers or solutions.

Greer continues to show that she deserves to be seen as more than “Hey, that girl!” Her relatability and charm help keep the character lighter than the subject matter might have allowed. Like the character of Sophie herself, Greer delicately dances between emotions – sometimes in the same scene. Given the small size of the cast, the chemistry between the core three is important and both Gathegi and Maadi also bring a natural gravitas to the film. 

Aporia asks a lot of interesting and important questions but it’s the kind of film that isn’t necessarily interested in following through with answers. Here that isn’t a detriment as the journey through asking those questions makes for one of the smartest time travel films in recent memory.

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On a Journey of Self-Discovery with a Dead Mouse

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Little Jar

by Christie Robb

Cast your mind back to the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic. Spring of 2020. When office folks were sent home to hastily assemble a workspace in some relatively unused area of the house. When you figured you might as well open a bottle of wine at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday. When you weren’t entirely sure if you were living in the apocalypse or not.

If you were an introvert, like Ainsley the main character of the movie Little Jar, you may have initially been pleased, especially if you, like her, lived alone. At first, Ainsley is elated to escape her boundary averse co-workers and even rebuffs the offer of a weekly Facetime hang with her brother. She wants to do this two week quarantine thing entirely on her own. Then, the internet goes down, she drops her phone in the bathtub, and the silence thickens.

She’s on her own. In the woods.

What could go wrong?

As the pandemic drags out into months, Ainsley gets creative in her attempts to find companionship and has to confront that sometimes basking in a little well-earned solitude can mutate over time into society forgetting you ever existed and your  being left for dead.

First time feature director Dominic Lopez, in collaboration with his co-writer and star Kelsey Gunn, create a dramatic and whimsical story that is completely absurd yet totally relatable. Primarily shot in one location with one actor and a taxidermy mouse in a beret as the leads, Little Jar really illustrates what independent filmmakers can accomplish with a limited budget (and that we’ve all probably still got a lot of pandemic stuff to deal with).

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Sister Sleuth

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The Nun II

by Hope Madden

The Nun II has at least one thing going for it. If someone could figure out what to do with her, that villain is creepy as hell.

Why? Partly because no one cuts a terrifying figure quite like Bonnie Aarons. And partly because, let’s be honest, nuns are scary. Like clowns. It’s just true.

We first ran into this Bad Habit in James Wan’s adequate 2016 sequel The Conjuring 2, but the film divided its villains up: old coot in a rocking chair (“I’m Bill Wilkins!”), the Crooked Man and – well, best not to say her name. But her screentime was very limited.

Then there was the tease in another middling sequel, Annabelle: Creation (a mediocre film, but miles better than the first in that particular franchise). She finally got her own story in 2018, with Corin Hardy’s wildly mediocre The Nun.

Can this excellent idea for a villain be put to good use, finally, with Michael Chaves’s sequel, The Nun II?

Meh.

It’s fine. It’s rated R, so that’s a start, although I’m not certain how it was deemed so problematic as to deserve the “keep the kids away” rating. There are a few creative deaths, almost elegantly macabre.

Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) is back on the trail of the demon nun after a series of disturbing deaths. Most of our time is spent in a monastery-turned-winery-turned-boarding school where Sister’s Irene’s old friend Maurice (Jonas Bloquet) has a job as a handyman and a crush on a teacher.

And, if memory serves, an inverted cross seared into the back of his neck. That smells like trouble (and burnt skin).

The setting is spooky, stagey and often quite atmospheric. Several of the set pieces are designed gorgeously. Bloquet continues to charm, and we not only get a nun this time but a very alarming goat-man. Nice!

The perversion of religious imagery continues to be the downfall of the series. It’s hard to take seriously, of course, because the Catholic church has a history of doing that itself. (The diocese of Syracuse claimed bankruptcy this summer due to the $100 million it owes to victims of sexual abuse.) This series would be more effective if the evil nun represented the decay within the church rather than a rogue demon weakened by an emissary of the Vatican.

Alas, Chaves settles for a bit of theoretical silliness bolstered by a nice touch of feminism, which feels delightfully heretical. So at least there’s that.

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Method Acting

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8 Found Dead

by Hope Madden

There are a lot of important elements that come together to make a good horror movie: tension, dread, atmosphere, maybe blood and gore. But nothing is more vital than the villain.

8 Found Dead, the Airbnb etiquette horror from Travis Greene, brings the goods when it comes to villains.

It seems Liz (Rosanne Limeres, splendid) and her husband Richard (real life husband Tim Simek) don’t have much to do now that their little hometown theater closed. But they can still put on a performance. Like pretending the Airbnb is double booked. Without Wi-Fi, how can anyone prove who’s really supposed to be there? Guess they’ll all just have to make the best of it.

8 Found Dead picks the same etiquette horror scabs as Speak No Evil or Funny Games – not quite as effectively, but with a macabre sense of humor that thoroughly entertains.

Rather than taking a chronological approach, Jonathan Buchanan’s script uses nonlinear storylines to allow each set of victims its own performance. Why should anyone have to share Liz and Richard?

Influencer Sam (Alisha Sope) and boyfriend Dwayne (William Gabriel Grier) head to an isolated Airbnb to make an announcement to Sam’s many followers. Carrie (Aly Trasher) and Ricky (Eddy Acosta) expect to join them, but they run late. Meanwhile, a 911 call brings two officers – an estranged married couple – out to investigate.

Each pair could learn a thing or two about commitment from Liz and Richard. These two are in it to win it.

8 Found Dead dances around some of the obvious questions that films like Barbarian and Funny Games address head on. But it also gets points for homaging the greatest lodging horror film of all time.

The opening falls to purposeless ogling – Jenny Tran’s performance deserved better – which the film struggles to overcome. But impressive editing and that shifting storyline keep Found Dead from ever getting stale.

Plus, there’s the promise that we could get to know Liz and Richard even better.

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Remembrance of Things Past

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Our Father, the Devil

by Matt Weiner

Much of contemporary horror and thrillers have found chilling but abstract ways to exorcise trauma. Ellie Foumbi’s feature debut Our Father, the Devil is a haunting and welcome twist on the formula, with its all-too-human demons and a direct confrontation of the horrors of the past.

Marie (Babetida Sadjo) enjoys her work as a chef for a retirement home in southern France. She treats the elderly residents humanely, to the extent that she is gifted a family cottage from the kindly Jeanne (Marine Amisse), a former chef who also happened to get Marie the job as her star pupil.

It’s a slow burn in the bucolic countryside until the arrival of Father Patrick (Souléymane Sy Savané). The mere sound of the priest’s voice causes Marie to panic, a feeling that is later confirmed during a taut exchange alone between the two that triggers a distinct memory for Marie.

This tension is broken with a fateful outburst from Marie, who knocks the priest out and ties him up at her new cabin. She suspects that Father Patrick is actually Sogo, a supposedly dead warlord who murdered Marie’s family in Guinea and abducted her into his army of child soldiers.

The rest of the film is a tense, unblinking interrogation of what this reality means for Marie and the life she has left behind. The escaped war criminal hiding in plain sight has been fodder for plenty of films and procedurals, but Foumbi’s humane script and deft direction quickly elevate the uncertainty from material to spiritual doubt.

The horror of what Marie—and perhaps Father Patrick—have witnessed and done to others points to a deep, existential rot. Foumbi does not shy away from the moral complexity of Marie’s pursuit of vengeance.

And while the “Is he / isn’t he” part of the suspense is cleared up surprisingly early, electric performances from Sadjo and Savané and their interplay together keep the tension at almost unbearable levels for most of the film. Foumbi’s script eschews condemnation and easy answers in equal measure, and it wouldn’t work without the nuanced turns from the leads. Our Father, the Devil throws up a lot of weighty questions around forgiveness and salvation. The film is less concerned with answering those questions, but then that’s also the point. Escaping a cycle of trauma and abuse is hard. But not as hard as forgiveness.

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No Village Required

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Scrapper

by George Wolf

12 year-old Georgie (the amazing Lola Campbell) doesn’t believe it takes a village. Even after the death of her mother, Georgie’s doing fine, thanks.

She dutifully crosses the stages of grief off her notepad, and steals bicycles with her friend Ali (Alin Uzun) for the money to support herself. When social services calls to speak with Georgie’s uncle “Winston Churchill,” she plays back a series of canned messages recorded by her friendly grocery store clerk.

Yeah, Georgie’s got a nice little racket going, until Jason (Harris Dickinson) shows up with some reality. Both are unwelcome.

Jason is Georgie’s long lost dad, and he isn’t moved by how many “Get Lost!” signs she hangs up around the London flat.

After years of short films, TV episodes and music videos, writer/director Charlotte Regan delivers a feature debut full of warm magic and youthful zest. Though the question of father/daughter bonding is rarely in doubt, the brisk family journey (84 minutes) is consistently engaging and frequently hilarious.

And what a find Regan has in Campbell. In a debut performance on par with Brooklyn Prince’s breakout turn in The Florida Project, little Lola sports sharp comic timing without a hint of pretension, trading droll deadpans with the excellent Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness, Where the Crawdads Sing, Beach Rats) in a display of mischievous chemistry that earns effortless smiles and solid laughs – especially when the two are giving imaginary dialog to a couple of strangers they see on the street.

“We can hear you, mate!”

Regan takes a core story of heartbreaking grief and tucks it inside the type of escapist wonder a child might turn to for comfort, With some Wes Andeson-esque blocking and reaction cutaways a la Edgar Wight, Regan brings Georgie’s imagination to vivid, amusing life as she questions the worth of a father she has never known.

The script is smart, wry and witty. And while the film may be full of deadpan humor, it also delivers some gentle insight with an emotional pull that may surprise you. Much like little Georgie, Scrapper is a bit of a hustler.

But let them both work you over. It won’t hurt a bit.

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Up All Night

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Thirst

by Rachel Willis

Part horror, part environmental allegory, Eric Owen’s film Thirst is a disappointing foray into a world of fear and paranoia.

Early in the film, we’re introduced to Jose (Brian Villalobos) and Lucy (Lori Kovacevich). Jose works for a high-powered law firm and struggles to show his commitment to the company, laboring long hours that result in sleepless nights. The crux of the film’s horror comes from Jose’s lack of sleep. Anyone with chronic insomnia might recognize some of the symptoms: increasing irritability, an inability to focus, and a bone-crushing weariness that never abates.

As Jose’s insomnia continues night after night, his behavior becomes progressively erratic. Lucy is forced to consider a possibility from Jose’s past, adding another layer of tension to the horror. The inability to sleep, the mood swings, and the hallucinations lead her down a dark path. However, the reality is darker than even Lucy can guess.

The film’s first two acts manage to ratchet the tension up slowly, but progressively. As additional characters make their way into the film – particularly Jose’s sister, Vicky (Federica Estaba Rangel) – we get a glimpse of others suffering from behavior like Jose’s.

The story’s weakest moments come when we spend inordinate amounts of time with Vickey and her partner, Lisa. The deterioration of their relationship doesn’t fit with the rest of the film, nor does it add anything meaningful to the theme. Lisa is introduced merely to add a possible explanation for what we’re witnessing on screen, but her conspiracy theory rantings make her unreliable. That she might happen to be right occasionally does nothing to validate her as a trustworthy source.

The film’s final act takes a sharp turn. In some ways, it works. It explains a lot of what preceded it. On the other hand, the allegory isn’t effective, and the tonal shift is jarring. Neither element manages to derail the film entirely, but some of the answers to the questions raised in the beginning aren’t satisfying. In the end, Owen’s seems more interested in delivering a message than a wholly satisfying film.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Equalizer 3, Bottoms, Perpetrator & More

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Equalizer 3, Bottoms, Perpetrator, Between Two Worlds, The Good Mother, Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, Ernest and Celestine, Astrakan

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The Break Bones Club

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Bottoms

by Hope Madden

Bottoms essentially follows a traditional teen comedy path, from the first day of senior year (with the high expectations of finally turning your popularity and romantic luck around) through that fraught homecoming football game. Our underdogs hatch a scheme to win the affections of the hot cheerleaders.

But if you saw co-writer/director Emma Seligman and co-writer/star Rachel Sennott’s uncomfortably brilliant 2020 comedy Shiva Baby, you have some idea of what you’re in for. Expect a chaotic, boundary pushing satire unafraid to offend.

PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri, so funny earlier this summer in Theater Camp) are their high school’s ugly, untalented gays. PJ is always scheming to get some cooch, and this will be their year. Her idea? Start a fight club for the girls in the school. Or, you know, a self-defense club. Where you wrestle around and hit and get excited and sweaty and close.

Josie is not down with this, but PJ usually gets her way and the next thing you know –well, you saw Fight Club, right? Because those men were only convincing themselves they were being pushed around, bullied and disempowered.

Part John Hughes, part Jennifer Reeder, part Chuck Palahniuk, Bottoms exists in a bizarre world of deadpan absurdism so littered with smart, biting commentary that you’ll need to see it twice to catch all of it.

Sennott and Edebiri are as fun a set of besties as Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart. Maybe even as fun as Beanie Feldstein and Saiorse Ronan in Lady Bird. Nicholas Galitzine is a riot as the quarterback, Jeff, and Ruby Cruz delivers as the one earnest lesbian hoping to empower and create solidarity with this club.

Seligman’s tone, her image of high school and high school movies, is wildly, irreverently funny and fearless. It’s hilarious, raunchy, and so much fun.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?