The gorgeous, warm, burnished glow of colorist Raúl Lavado Verdú and strategic photography by Miguel Ángel Mora elevates writer/director F. Javier Gutiérrez (Rings) take on a working-class man’s emasculation and subsequent descent into madness.
Three years ago, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) was offered a job as a gamekeeper on a privately-owned 1970s Spanish hunting estate. His wife reluctantly agreed on the condition that the gig was temporary—a two-year isolated hustle up in the mountains that would result in a better life on the other side.
Now, into their third year, she’s no longer talking to him. And their kid is growing restless, too.
When Eladio is offered a new opportunity to increase the size of their growing nest egg, greed overwhelms him. He pushes his luck too far.
Fortune’s Wheel turns and starts to crush him.
But is Eladio’s greed really the root of the evils that beset him? What about the guy who pressured him into the shady deal? And what’s with all the weird shit buried around the property?
The acting is good, and the movie has some genuinely unsettling moments. But it’s a little slow and leaves a subplot about feminine rage on the table like a loaded but unfired hunting rifle in favor of something more para than normal.
So, it’s good to have pretty shots of the Spanish mountains to look at while you are waiting for the plot to catch up with the unsettling, sweaty, grimy, overripe vibe.
When childhood friends reunite for a birthday weekend, they didn’t sign up for this RV road trip of a lifetime—that ends up cutting several short.
Writer/director Andy Fickman (Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2) has a few decent jump scares up his directorial sleeve with Don’t Turn Out the Lights, an early spooky season horror flick.
He shows up to the party with a potentially fun cast of characters, cool sound effects, and a well-used fog machine. But…that’s about it.
The characters are thin and underwritten. It’s established that these people are all deeply connected (except for one critically-underused plus one, a roommate of the core group played by John Bucy). I expected secrets and interesting group dynamics to play into the horror movie set-pieces.
Instead, we get stock characters: Instagram Girl, Jock, Stoner, Rich Bitch, Pick Me, Boyfriend, Rapey Racists…
With such thin characters, it’s difficult to muster up the empathy for any one of them to really care much about their fate. Which would have been fine if the Big Bad had been compelling.
But, it’s not really clear what’s causing all the carnage. Is it an external force or something driving the friends into crazed-self harm/psychopathy? It seems to be made up of a mish-mash of horror tropes that have absolutely nothing to do with each other all kind of deployed on random timers.
The friends theorize about what’s going on in between convenient “waves” of paranormal attack.
In the end, there’s just…no payoff. It’s giving early draft of Cabin in the Woods energy, but on a much lower budget, and with the ending still largely undetermined.
A sumptuous candlelit romp through 17th century Europe, The Bohemian will reward those already familiar with the classical opera and life story of Czech composer Josef Mysliveček, but may leave the uninitiated a little lost.
Writer/director Petr Václav (Skokan) begins near the end. Mysliveček (Vojtěch Dyk) is at a pawn shop, trying to scrape together funds. He’s turning his sword in, so you know things are bad. He’s wearing a mask to disguise a face disfigured by syphilis, the wages earned by a life of hedonism in an age before antibiotics.
From there it’s a series of flashbacks following a young unknown Josef as he nurtures his talents, meets the right people, has love affairs, contracts a devastating STI and is generally completely upstaged by a child prodigy (Mozart, duh).
The movie contrasts the ethereal beauty of the music with the ugliness of the society that gave rise to it. Art patrons are presented as morally degenerate, uneducated, often violent monsters. The artists (and pretty much every female character) are at their mercy.
The story flashes back and forth, not spending much time on any particular character. The outfits are ornate, the hair and makeup so spectacular that it makes it a bit difficult to follow who is who throughout the film, especially if you aren’t particularly familiar with the era.
Visually and aurally, it’s an outstanding film. Many actors do their own vocal work, Simona Saturova dubs in for the film’s prima donna La Gabrielli. But, it lacks a strong narrative through line and the necessary historical exposition that would make this operatic biopic really sing.
A spare, competent take on the isolating toll of caregiving and grief from first-time feature writer/director Patrick Dickinson, Cottontail explores the beauty in human connection and the ability to find that connection though emotional vulnerability and honesty.
When Japanese widower Kenzaburo (Lily Franky, Shoplifters) receives a last request from his late wife, he embarks on a journey to Lake Windemere in England’s Lake District. He’s been drained by trying to care for Akiko (Tae Kimura, House of Ninjas) alone as she struggled with dementia, attempting to shield his adult son, Toshi, from the more unpleasant (and literally shitty) parts of this work. This only drove the two men apart.
But it’s clear that their estrangement started years earlier. Akiko was the glue that held the family together. Kenzaburo was too focused on his own work to let Toshi into his life. And now, he wants to take this last journey alone, as if he is the only one who lost someone.
Weaving together the main narrative with key flashbacks, Kenzaburo wanders lost—metaphorically, in his own grief and shame, and literally, as he attempts to find Lake Windemere on foot, having gotten on the wrong train.
There’s a brief interlude where Kenzabro asks for help at an English cottage door and finds fellowship with another widower (an underutilized Ciarán Hinds), but otherwise the film keeps its focus on the main family and the drama that pulls them together even as they drift apart.
Simple and straightforward, like the beautifully prepared plate of sushi that appears in the first act of the film, Cottontail lets Franky carry the movie with the strength and confidence of an emotionally nuanced performer.
Is the film predictable? Yes. But so, sadly, is loss and grief and the struggle to stay emotionally available when adulthood means growing old and falling apart.
Mr. Rogers was famous for advising children in the face of a crisis to “Look for the helpers.” And that’s a great line. Great advice for children. But adults need to look at the shitty policies and bad actors, too. Because, unlike children, adults tend to be in a better position to enact positive change. To become helpers. But, first, they need to see what’s going wrong. And Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is an invitation to stare directly into a Big Wrong.
Over thirty years since Europa Europa, Holland provides us with an opportunity to stare down another humanitarian crisis. But this time it’s not Nazi Germany, not a historical atrocity safely in the distant past. This time, Holland sets her sights on contemporary abuses.
The film opens on a commercial jet flight. A family of six is on their way to reconnect with a relative in Sweden—mom and dad, daughter and son, infant sibling, a doting grandpa. Their concerns seem limited to who gets the window seat and if the infant can be pacified before fellow passengers start glaring.
Then, they land in Belarus and it all goes to shit.
Because these aren’t tourists. They’re refugees fleeing Syria, lured by propaganda put out by Belarus’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko promising emigrants an easy passage through his country to safety and asylum in Europe. This safe passage was a lie, apparently designed to fuck Europe over after being hit by sanctions for his “election.”
Nobody wants these people who were already living life in extremis—some in refugee camps, some fleeing ISIS, some in danger of execution for loving the wrong person.
The Belarussians don’t want them. Neither do the Poles. The border guards on both sides being fed rumors that all the migrants are “living bullets” designed to destabilize their respective countries. And while, yes, some of the migrants may be dangerous people just like in any group of humans, these rumors allow the guards to dehumanize migrants at large. Sending them at gunpoint back and forth across the forested, swampy “green border” between the two countries.
Separating families. Tossing pregnant people over razor-wire fences. Giving thermoses of water mixed with broken glass to folks dying of thirst.
The Syrian family and other refugees they meet along the way are treated to a nightmare game of keep away where what is being kept away from them is their freedom, health, dignity, and—all too often—their lives.
Green Border is a narrative film that slaps human faces on the grim statistics of the migrant crisis. But it’s based in extensive interviews the director and writers conducted. It explores the perspective of the refugees, and also the border guards and human rights workers.
Relentlessly depressing, it is not without poignant moments of hope and connection. Because there are helpers. Even if their numbers are currently far too few. We can do better, humanity. We have got to do better. But it starts by looking.
In the middle of the long transition from child to adult, high school freshman Abby (Sierra McCormick, The Vast of Night) loses her primary caregiver. Now, she has to move in with a distant father (Jason Butler Harner, Ozark) and his much younger partner and navigate her grief and the horrors of adolescence without much of a safety net.
She’s got her friends, sure—a few she seems to have known since kindergarten. They all seem smart, stable, sensible.
But they aren’t what she’s craving right now. Abby is looking for distraction and drama. And she finds it in Caroline (Ryan Simpkins, Fear Street), an underage drinker and Bad Influence willing to trade sexual favors for drugs or booze. With Caroline, Abby experiments with a new persona and new experiences, some of which veer toward the dangerous.
The film could have become a morality play, but the debut feature-length writer/director team of Sophia Sabella and Pablo Feldman aren’t here for that. Instead, they depict—without judgement—a slice of what can be a hugely complicated time in a person’s life, even when they aren’t flattened under a glacier’s worth of grief.
With its short run time, The Edge of Everything could have stood to flesh out some of the relationships and characters a bit more, particularly that between Abby and her father. But what we do have is good. McCormick delivers such a subtle, natural performance that at times it’s hard to remember you are watching an actor at work. She’s a talent to keep an eye on.
When aspiring rapper Sol (Suave Sidle) is discovered by a touring band at a house party in Austin, Texas, he drops everything and takes off with them that same night to pursue his dreams. But what has he left behind?
Written and directed by first-time feature director Katherine Propper, Lost Soulz is a slow, dreamy road trip where Donald R. Monroe’s camera lingers over the exquisite and the weird.
It invites us to explore creativity and connection. And how the wounds from our past create reverberating ripples in our lives, even as we strive toward beauty and hope.
In the hands of another director, this movie could easily have become melodrama, even trauma porn. But Propper is restrained, elegant in her approach. The performances of her cast (mostly with few IMDB credits behind them) are natural, subtle, and effective. Sol is by far the most complex and nuanced. His relationship with the younger sister of his best friend (Giovahnna Gabriel) is endearing and a shrewd move on Propper’s part. What a great way to soften an ambitious young man’s character than to give him a spunky girl to care for. Or an animal. And there are animals, too.
The music is pretty alright. Kinda lo-fi. Mostly chill. It’s original and performed by the cast. But what’s even better than the results is seeing the band members improv together, adding different vocal elements over beats, changing the words, mixing it up, adding layers, bouncing ideas off each other. Making something and having a good time while doing it. It’s a joy to watch.
When high school buddies Dexter (writer/director Zach Green) and Rex (writer Devin O’Rourke) meet up again on the eve of their ten-year reunion weekend, they decide to make the catch up more exclusive and head out West—into the sunset.
Or, in this case…East.
They’re taking the road from Bakersfield, CA into the desert toward a camping trip for two. To Olddale, where there’s rumors of a paranormal vortex.
Dexter hopes the mysterious vibes will unlock a font of inspiration. He’s a struggling director with a pitch meeting on Monday and a notebook full of empty pages and the concept “Big Bugs.” Rex is hunting UFOs. He’s convinced that he was abducted in high school and has the scar to prove it. And rumor has it that the vortex was caused by a UFO that crashed there 60 years ago.
When a chatty stranger (Chris Doubek) wanders into camp with a piece of purported alien foil, Dex and Rex butt heads on how to deal with him.
It’s a promising set up. The establishing scenes recall a young Kevin Smith—quick, self-effacing slacker banter in a 1997 video store. Background characters pop up, delightfully steal scenes, and then vanish (Ari Stidham from TV’s Scorpion as Felix the video store manager!)
The team got a lot of the technical stuff right. The desert is beautifully shot, all dusty golden hour and dramatic rock formations. The score is vintage western. Twangy, lived in, a bit camp. A great vibe for the project.
The second act rambles. Sometimes bromace. Sometimes X-Files. Sometimes stoner comedy. Often the Odd Couple. But not quite enough of any of the elements.
Our heroes are placed in physical danger. Their relationship teeters on the brink. But it doesn’t quite come together. In the end, it’s unclear who, if anyone, the audience is rooting for. But an adventure was definitely had.
When small-town pushover Ray (John Magaro, Past Lives) finds himself caught up in a blackmail/murder-for-hire scheme, he teams up with high school-acquaintance/bumbling private investigator Skip (Steve Zahn) to get to the bottom of things.
This neo-noir crime-comedy is writer/director Shane Atkinson’s first feature (he wrote the screenplay for the 2019 Diane Keaton vehicle Poms). It feels like a streamlined take on the Big Lebowski—mistaken identity gets loser in over his head in a world full of morally ambiguous/dangerous characters. An overly-invested partner invites himself along and makes the situation worse. A somewhat complex mystery is unraveled. There are funny interactions with various weirdos.
Zahn (White Lotus) is a highlight. His cowboy-at-prom ensemble. His golden retriever vibe. His enthusiasm for detection. It’s all glorious.
Dylan Baker’s (Selma) Harry the Hitman is unsettling in the manner of that unassuming neighbor who keeps to himself but then gets caught doing something unspeakable, like using a stray cat as a fleshlight. He shifts from disarming charm to efficient malevolence like a finely-tuned racecar.
However, while LaRoy, Texas is funny, it’s missing the quirk of the Cohen brothers cult classic. The lead, Ray, lands as a too bland everyman—a boring sad-sack point of stability around which the plot turns. The dialogue could be snappier. The women could have more to do. And it definitely deserved a better soundtrack.
But if you are looking to program a night of neo-noir, you could totally play LaRoy, Texas as an opening act as long as you save the superstars like Fargo and the Big Lebowski for later in the evening.
