Bruce Campbell brings Last Fan Standing & Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn to Kemba Live! in Columbus, Ohio on April 21 as part of his Bruce-o-Rama! He drops by Fright Club to discuss!
Listen in, and get tickets to the event at promowestlive.com.
Screening Room: Air, Super Mario Bros., Paint, The Five Devils & More
Oklahoma Not Okay
One Day as a Lion
by George Wolf
A few films in now, director John Swab’s favorite playbook seems to be upending familiar narratives with unexpected left turns. But unlike previous projects such as Candy Land, Little Dixie and Ida Red, his latest is built on a script Swab didn’t pen himself.
One Day as a Lion comes from screenwriter Scott Caan, who also stars as Jackie Powers, consistently recalling his father James as an Oklahoma man driven to desperate measures by the arrest of his son, Billy (Dash Melrose).
With Billy’s hearing just days away, Jackie needs money to hire TV lawyer Kenny Walsh (Billy Blair), who refers to himself in the third person and promises results. To get the money that talks to Kenny Walsh, Jackie agrees to whack powerful local rancher Walter Boggs (J.K. Simmons), who hasn’t paid his gambling debts to crime boss Pauly Russo (Frank Grillo).
But the diner hit goes south, leaving Jackie to kidnap waitress Lola Brisky (Marianne Rendón) and head out on the run, while Walter and Pauly threaten Jackie and each other.
Sound like your standard thriller, right?
Caan has something a little more zany in mind. As Jackie and Lola hit up her mother (Virginia Madsen )- a rich woman known as “Black Widow” after her trail of dead husbands – for the needed funds, a whiff of romantic comedy is in the air. And with Okie hillbillies arguing about gymnastics and Pauly yelling about belt buckles, the whole adventure starts to feel like the remote intersection of Taylor Sheridan and a Jimmy Johns commercial.
But Swab frames the dusty landscapes and empty streets with an appropriately desperate grit, the ensemble digs into the character eccentricities, and One Day as a Lion pulls you along a light but oddly compelling tale of kooky crime and possible punishment.
I’m still trying to figure out just what is up with the post-credits stinger, but even it lands with a “what just happened?” vibe that seems right at home here.
Big Top of Broken Dreams
Balloon Animal
by Brandon Thomas
Movies set in or around circuses often have a darkness to them. If the animal cruelty doesn’t get to you then the limitless tales of alcoholism and depression will. Oh, and one of them has Pee-wee Herman running around. Thankfully Balloon Animal leaves the cruelty and boozing behind in favor of a thoughtful character piece about isolation and expectations.
Poppy Valentine (Katherine Waddell) makes the balloon animals at Valentine’s Traveling Circus, owned by her overbearing father Dark Valentine (Ilia Volok). The once bustling circus now plays to sparse, apathetic crowds. Dark’s intense dependence on his daughter is fueled by his wife’s abandonment of him years before. After her father offers her a more significant role in the business, Poppy begins to question her place in the circus, her father’s life, and the world at large.
At first glance, the premise of Balloon Animal reads like half of dozen indie dramas released since the mid-90s. That assessment isn’t completely untrue, to be fair. However, the difference is in the execution. Writer-director Em Johnson delivers an honest – but never quite brutal – drama that always feels real to its characters. Poppy’s trajectory through the film is natural and doesn’t end up where you think it will.
Setting this story inside a traveling circus is a fascinating choice. Johnson shows little interest in digging into the mechanics of the circus or its day-to-day. The focus is on the people who live and work inside this nomadic community. For them, it’s just a job (for now). For Poppy, though, there’s a cost of isolation and monotony that she’s unable to ignore and eventually begins to reject.
The performances are just as notable as the film’s tight storytelling. Waddell’s naturalistic charm makes her a great focal point. She delicately straddles Poppy’s creeping loneliness while allowing the character’s meek pragmatism to shine through. It’s not a showy role, but Waddell does so much with it. Likewise, Volok turns what could be a wholly unlikable character into someone with pathos. His ferocity is equaled only by his ability to elicit empathy from the audience.
Balloon Animal doesn’t end with any definitive answers for its characters. What it does, though, is give them a stopping point for this particular story in their lives and a starting point for an entirely new one.
Kindness Has No Borders
A Handful of Water
by Daniel Baldwin
Jakob Zapf’s quiet drama A Handful of Water revolves around grieving widower Konrad Hausnick (Jurgen Prochnow) living out his days going through his usual routine in a very cold and robotic manner, with the only light in his life coming not from his adult daughter and her new family, but instead from his fish-filled basement aquarium. He is a man who has found himself unable to move beyond his sorrow, nor to find room in his heart for the joy of others. Enter Thurba Al-Sherbini (Milena Pribak).
Thurba is a 12-year-old Yemeni refugee who is on the run . She set off into the world on her own when German police come knocking at her home, forcing her to leave her mother and two siblings behind. Per German law, the family cannot be deported back to Bulgaria unless all members are accounted for. If you’re guessing that Thurba manages to take up residence in Konrad’s home, you’re right on the Deutsche Mark!
A young person managing to bring a bereaved aging man out of his shell is a tale as old as time. Sometimes it comes in the form of fantastical animation like Up!, a violent comic book blockbuster like Logan, or a soaring sports drama like Creed. And sometimes it arrives in a much smaller package, as it does here. This is a tried and true formula because it’s one that often sings and that holds true for this film as well.
Those of you who are primarily used to seeing Prochnow vamp it up in a villainous manner across decades of genre cinema are in for a treat here, as this is a very different side of the man. Jurgen has rarely been better than he is as Konrad, and his performance is matched pound for pound by newcomer Pribak. They are the heart and soul of the film. It doesn’t matter if you can guess where things will go at almost every turn, as the flavors they add to the journey make it worthwhile.
A Handful of Water might not contain very many surprises, but it also avoids the pitfalls of many dramas of this type. It’s never too on the nose with its message and it’s never too saccharine for its own good either. Zapf, Prochnow, and Pribak get the recipe right from moment one and the end result is a fine little drama.
How to Train Your Latin Dragon
The Fist of the Condor
by Daniel Baldwin
Since 2006, the Chilean powerhouse team of writer/director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza and martial arts superstar Marko Zaror has been delivering some of the best independent action cinema in the world. From raucous martial arts mayhem (Kiltro) to street-level superhero satire (Mirageman) to Eurospy parody (Mandrill), their wild body of work together has been a diabolical fondue of influences ranging from kung fu movies to spaghetti westerns to blaxploitation cinema and beyond. What makes them all the more impressive is that of the four previous films they’ve made together, no two are alike in terms of style and tone. Other than a good time, you never know what you’re going to get from an Espinoza and Zaror pairing.
The Fist of the Condor sees this duo reuniting for the first time in almost a decade. Their last outing, the rogue assassin tale Redeemer, had been their weakest effort to date, but I’m happy to report that they’ve bounced back here and then some. A deep-flowing love of classic kung fu cinema has always run throughout their collaborations, but it’s never flowed as deeply or as lovingly as it does here.
This is a martial arts adventure just as concerned with evoking the philosophy of both the genre and the real-life practices behind it as it is in showcasing expertly-choreographed fights. There is a poeticism behind the fisticuffs on display here that calls to mind the Hong Kong classics of yore, leaving us with a masterful modern piece of meditative martial arts cinema that would make the Shaw Brothers smile.
Espinoza has always had a way with striking imagery that is a delicious mix of exquisite location photography and beautiful artifice that holds decades of movie knowledge behind it. Condor is no different, as it births some of the best sequences his wonderful mind has conjured to date. All backed by another excellent ‘70s-infused score by longtime collaborator Rocco, of course!
Those whose only experience with Marko “The Latin Dragon” Zaror are his villainous turns in Hollywood films such as John Wick: Chapter 4 and Machete Kills might be surprised to see the monk-like heroism of his primary role here. Fear not, however, as he also plays his own evil twin! His heroic (but not innocent) protagonist Guerrero is his best role since Kiltro and one we’ll be lucky to see continue, since this is meant to be the first in a trilogy. The next two cannot get here soon enough.
Holding Out for a Hero
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
by Hope Madden
Allegedly, Anya Taylor-Joy, who’d never played a Mario game of any kind, played incessantly to prepare for her role as Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I have also never played, but I am far less committed.
Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (both of Teen Titans fame) hit their tone in an absurd, adorable opening sequence that introduces the evil of Bowser (Jack Black, perfect). Then we skip to Brooklyn to meet a pair of lovable plumbing losers, Luigi (Charlie Day) and Mario (Chris Pratt).
Soon the indefatigable Mario and his hapless brother are sucked into another realm where the filmmakers show their fondness for these games. To keep from inadvertently spoiling any surprises, I’ll limit my description because I have no idea what is and is not an Easter egg here.
But video games equal quests and quests are excellent underpinnings for films as long as you strike the right tone. The recent Dungeons & Dragons movie knew that, which is why it was the first success in three attempts to turn that game into a good movie.
Writer Matthew Fogel (Minions: The Rise of Gru) balances light hearted humor with video game architecture that benefits from Illumination’s trademark vibrant color. Bowser gets an excellent music video moment custom made for Black, and Seth Rogan gives Donkey Kong a bratty quality I never realized he needed.
Plus, did you know there were these skeleton turtle zombies? AND little masked dystopian devil soldier guys who are simultaneously goth and cute as can be? But this side of the coin gets little attention, the filmmakers instead making a solidly family friendly flick with no grim undercurrents.
It’s simple enough for kids to enjoy it, it throws a little macabre humor at you via Lumalee (Juliet Jelenic), and it looks good. Not glorious, but definitely good. The game-like levels definitely go on for too long and you feel each of those scant 92 minutes, but it’s a pretty good time.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie feels to me like a fitting celebration of a series of beloved video games. But what do I know? As a movie, it’s perfectly entertaining.
Bedeviled
The Five Devils
by Hope Madden
The magical realism of Léa Mysius’s sophomore feature takes a minute to suss out. Things feel straightforward enough, at least for a time. Although, how can a person miss the magic in Sally Dramé’s little face?
Dramé plays Vicky, and she plays her magnificently. Vicky’s an odd duck, disliked intensely at school but happy as can be accompanying her mother, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) to the pool where Joanne is an instructor and lifeguard.
But all is not right at home between Vicky’s parents, and when her dad’s sister Julia (Swala Emati) comes to stay, things really come undone.
Mysius expertly balances family drama with fantastical elements to achieve an emotional honesty about a complex topic. The drama itself borders on melodrama, with backstabbing, coupling and uncoupling, and sexual relations of an almost Greek tragedy sort. Understated performances from the entire cast keep it from devolving into soap opera, but Mysius has something better than that in store.
The time travel magic of the film, limited as it is to the impish Vicky, allows for a childlike innocence, even when the implications of that magic become very dark. Essentially, by straddling soap opera antics and fantasy elements, Mysius can ask more questions about family entanglements than she answers. But the questions she asks are so rarely tackled that leaving them hanging does not feel unsatisfying.
Again, so much of the success of the film sits with the emotionally honest performances. Exarchopoulos once again delivers raw vulnerability that never feels staged. In fact, despite its sometimes lurid narrative meanderings, there is nothing showy about The Five Devils.
This is an unusual film, generous with its characters even as it looks at the selfishness of love, the neediness within family, and the strange battles we fight.
It’s Gotta Be the Shoes
Air
by George Wolf
1984. It was the best of times for Converse and Adidas, as they dominated the market share for basketball shoes. But for Nike’s basketball division, it was the worst of times that threatened to shut them down completely.
That all changed, of course, when Nike brought Michael Jordan into the fold, and Air deconstructs that watershed moment with an endlessly compelling vitality.
If you still need proof that Ben Affleck is a damn fine director, you’ll find it, right down to how he frames the multiple telephone conversations. But the real surprise here is the script. In a truly sparkling debut, writer Alex Convery brings history to life with an assured commitment to character.
Taking his inspiration from the ESPN documentary Sole Man, Convery invites us into the sneaker wars via Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), the legendary shoe rep and “Mr. Miyagi” of amateur b-ball. Convinced the only way to save Nike basketball was to tailor everything around Jordan, Sonny began relentlessly lobbying Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck), executive Howard White (Chris Tucker) and marketing director Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman).
And when Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina) tells Sonny it’s a lost cause, he brazenly heads to North Carolina for a face-to-face meeting with M.J.’s mother (Viola Davis) and father (Julius Tennon).
Davis was reportedly Michael’s personal choice, proving the man knows more than basketball. She’s as masterful as you’d expect, becoming the linchpin in a sterling ensemble that delivers Convery’s nimble dialog with consistent authenticity and wit.
And much like his success with the Oscar-winning Argo, Affleck proves adept at a pace and structure that wrings tension from an outcome we already know. In fact, he goes one better this time, inserting archival footage that actually reminds us of how this all turned out, before leaving Mrs. Jordan’s final ultimatum hanging in the air like a levitating slam from Michael.
And as for the man himself, the film wisely treats him “like the shark in Jaws,” with rare glimpses that only reinforce the elusive nature of the game-changing prize this Nike team is out to land.
The film’s closing summary may flirt with hagiography, and some of the soundtrack hits do feel a bit forced, but Air finds a crowd-pleasing new groove inside a classic album. It’s the thrilling sports movie we didn’t know we needed, and a part of the Jordan legacy that instantly feels indispensable.
Bonus Fright Club: Kyle Edward Ball Skinamarink Q&A
