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Kubrick by Kubrick

by George Wolf

Stanley Kubrick gave so few interviews in his lifetime that an early striking moment in Gregory Monro’s Kubrick by Kubrick comes the first time you hear his voice.

It doesn’t really seem to fit, until you remember Kubrick wasn’t French or British, he was a native New Yorker. And he had a clear penchant for precise, matter-of-fact observations.

Film critic Michel Ciment was lucky enough to get some of those thoughts on tape over the course of several years, and Monro surrounds highlights of those cassette recordings with still photos, movie clips, and interviews with various cast and crew from Kubrick’s 13 movies.

Monro anchors the film with a recreation of the hotel suite from 2001. This one is adorned with mementos from Kubrick’s catalogue, which Monro spotlights as Ciment and Kubrick move their conversations from film to film.

Obviously, film fans will get critical insight into Kubrick’s mindset and interpretations of the stories he told (horror fans may especially take note of his far-from-the-rabbit-hole thoughts on The Shining).

But however much time Ciment spent with Kubrick, it seems Monro only found enough usable material for a heavily padded, barely one-hour running time, which leaves plenty unsaid. It’s certainly great to see all the classic clips from Kubrick’s films, but after actors such as Jack Nicholson, Malcolm McDowell, Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangleove) and Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon) comment on Kubrick’s legendary perfectionism, you wait for reactions from the man himself that never come.

Maybe beggars like us can’t be choosers, and there are fascinating answers from Kubrick here, chief among them some suddenly prescient thoughts on HAL’s A.I. awareness. Kubrick by Kubrick is the rare chance to get inside the mind of a guarded legend, and even when it leaves you wanting more, that somehow feels like an ending he had planned all along.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Inside, Boston Strangler, Magician’s Elephant & More

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Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Inside, Boston Strangler, Moving On, The Magician’s Elephant, Leave, Are You Lonesome Tonight?

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The Write Side of History

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Boston Strangler

by George Wolf

Writer/director Matt Ruskin wants us to remember that decades before the events of All the President’s Men, Spotlight or She Said, journalists – specifically women journalists – were heroically committed to finding the truth.

Wading through historical record with a detailed screenplay that’s surprisingly unaided by any source material, Ruskin crafts Boston Strangler as a salute to two dogged reporters and the mystery that still surrounds their biggest story.

In the 1960s, Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) was a lifestyle reporter for Boston’s Record American. She pressured editor Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper, reliable as always) for a better beat, but got approval to work the Strangler story only on her own time. As Loretta’s promising leads met increasing roadblocks, street-wise veteran Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) had her back and the two “girl” reporters started lighting up the front pages.

Knightley and Coon make for a team just as formidable as their characters, highlighting the contrasts of the two women’s lives while making it clear how much they came to depend on each other. The always welcome Alessandro Nivola adds solid support as Detective Conley, a sympathetic cop who proves useful to the case.

And you might remember that case eventually led to the confession of Albert DeSalvo (David Dastmalchian). But Ruskin is arguing that bit of history is far from settled, and he methodically makes his case via the work of McLaughlin and Cole.

Ruskin’s storytelling is patient and assured, nicely mirroring the ladies’ work ethic and building a subtle bridge from past to present through the sexism and police corruption that made the truth even more evasive.

The film is more compelling than thrilling, striking a tone that fits the material. It’s not the splashy headline that’s important, it’s what kind of substance is delivered underneath. Boston Strangler delivers a relevant history lesson, and another salute to the ones that keep asking questions.

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Missions Possible

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The Magician’s Elephant

by George Wolf

Anything is possible, just believe in your dreams.

That’s a fine moral for The Magician’s Elephant. But much like the film itself, it’s a bit generic and less than memorable.

Based on the children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, this Netflix animated adventure takes us to the land of Baltese, where strange clouds have rolled in and “people stopped believing.” Young orphan Peter (voiced by Noah Jupe) is being raised by an old soldier (Mandy Patinkin) to live a soldier’s life, which will be hard because “the world is hard.”

It gets harder when Peter uses meal money for a fortune teller (Natasia Demetriou) to tell him how his long lost sister can be found. The soldier told Peter the girl died at birth, but that’s not what he remembers, and a palm reading confirms that she is indeed alive.

To find her, Peter must “follow the elephant.”

But there are no elephants in Baltese, at least until a desperate magician (Benedict Wong) makes one fall from the sky. And after the magician and the elephant are both locked up for causing trouble, Peter begs the King (Aasif Mandvi) to let him care for the beast, as it is “only guilty of being an elephant.”

The King agrees, providing Peter can complete three tasks. Three impossible tasks.

Ah, but remember, nothing is impossible!

Director Wendy Rogers (a visual effects vet helming her first feature) and screenwriter Martin Hynes have plenty of threads to juggle, from animal cruelty to the costs of war to a Dickensian twist of fate. The resulting narrative ends up feeling overstuffed and convoluted.

The muted coloring no doubt reflects the village’s cloudy atmosphere, and the stiff animation may be intended to recall a children’s popup, but there is little in the film’s aesthetic that is visually inspiring.

Mandvi and Patinkin are the most successful at crafting indelible characterizations, while the rest of the voice cast (also including Brian Tyree Henry and Miranda Richardson) manages workmanlike readings that neither disappoint or standout.

Same for the film. The Magician’s Elephant pulls plenty from its crowded hat, but has trouble conjuring anything that is truly magical.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Drugs in Horror Movies

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It wasn’t always bears, kids. In other movies, people use drugs, although the result – limbs akimbo and carnage aplenty – usually still follows. Here are our favorite druggie horror flicks.

5. Cabin in the Woods (2011) (weed)

There are countless reasons to love Drew Goddard’s 2011 horror mash note Cabin in the Woods. Not the least of which is Fran Kranz as Marty, pothead.

Easily the favorite character (inside the cabin, anyway), Marty not only provides the levity necessary for this particular trope to work, his weedy logic is all that actually makes sense in this world.

The entire film is a trip, but it’s Marty’s trip that’s most worth taking.

4. Cocaine Bear (2023) (cocaine, obviously)

The year is 1985, from what I can piece together from an inspired soundtrack of pop hits spilling out of speakers, and one Jefferson Starship fan is about to make a jump from his plane with an awful lot of coke. Things don’t go well, and next thing you know, drug kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta in his final screen performance) is sending his reluctant son (Alden Ehrenreich) and best guy (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to Blood Mountain to retrieve $14 million in missing blow.

As you may have guessed from the title, a bear found it first.

Inspired, manic carnage follows. Entrails spill, children fill their mouths with cocaine, skate punks lose their heads (well, parts of their heads), EMTs really earn their pay, and we all have an incredible, brightly colored, viscera covered good time!

3. Climax (2018) (LSD)

Oh, Gaspar Noe, you scamp! The provocateur returned to screens in 2018 with a bad trip full of percussive dancing and concussive beats that will leave you as bewildered, wrung out, unsettled and horrified as the characters.

Sofia Boutella leads an ensemble of dancers locked into a French warehouse post-production to just party. But there’s more in that sangria than fruit and soon enough, the party is an inescapable hellscape.

Noe has a way with pummeling an audience, overstimulating and punishing us into submission. Turns out, he can also choreograph a decent dance number!

2. Hagazussa (2017) (mushrooms)

Making a remarkably assured feature debut as director, Lukas Feigelfeld mesmerizes with his German Gothic poetry, Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse. Settled somewhere in the 15th Century Alps, the film shadows lonely, ostracized women struggling against a period where plague, paranoia and superstition reigned.

Albrun’s is a tragic story and Feigelfeld crafts it with a believable loneliness that bends toward madness. He’s captured this moment in time, this draining and ugly paranoia that caused women such misery, with imagery that is perplexingly beautiful.

He’s cast a spell and you should submit.

1. Mandy (2018) (LSD)

A hallucinogenic fever dream of social, political and pop-culture subtexts layered with good old, blood-soaked revenge, Mandy throws enough visionary strangeness on the screen to dwarf even Nicolas Cage in full freakout mode.

Not just Nic, either. Andrea Riseborough, cannibal bikers on LSD, The Chemist, and a religious sex cult led by a terrible folk singer. Plus a sword, an axe, a lot of blood, and did I mention the LSD?

Like director Panos Cosmatos’s 2010 debut Beyond the Black Rainbow, Mandy is both formally daring and wildly borrowed. While Black Rainbow, also set in 1983, shines with the antiseptic aesthetic of Cronenberg or Kubrick, Mandy feels more like something snatched from a Dio album cover.

It is as insane as any beautifully conceived, expertly executed film has ever been and you must give yourself to it.

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Rising Up to Meet You

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The Quiet Girl

by George Wolf

This has been a fan-fecking-tastic awards season for the Emerald Isle. Multiple Oscar nominee The Banshees of Inisherin has racked up plenty of other noms and wins these last few weeks, and the sublime short feature An Irish Goodbye is a recent BAFTA winner and leading Oscar contender ahead of Sunday’s ceremony.

But the hometown favorite might well be The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), up for a Best International Film Oscar after winning seven of its ten nominations at the recent Irish Film Awards.

So yes, it’s feckin’ good, and it’s so exquisitely, heartbreakingly Irish.

In fact, the feature debut from writer/director Colm Bairéad is the first Irish language film to be nominated for an Oscar, but it begins speaking through the subtle foreshadowing of a cuckoo’s song – the bird known for laying its eggs in the nests of others.

And in rural Ireland circa 1981, young Cáit (an astonishing debut from Catherine Clinch) is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with “her mother’s people” for the summer. Middle-aged couple Seán (Andrew Bennett) and Eibhlín (a marvelous Carrie Crowley) have never met the shy and introspective Cáit, but they welcome her into their home.

Seán spends most days working the farm, so Eibhlín tends to Cáit with an unconditional affection she has never known, and the young girl begins to blossom. But after Eibhlín declares “if there are secrets, there is shame,” Cáit discovers a secret that permeates the farmhouse.

Like Belgium’s Close (also up for Best International Feature), The Quiet Girl features a terrific debut from a child actor and is draped in a tender stillness that gently cradles the building of its central relationship. Clinch and Crowley are absolutely wonderful together, rendering it nearly impossible not the care whether this wide-eyed young girl and her wounded mother figure will feel safe enough to open their hearts.

In adapting Claire Keegan’s novella, Bairéad’s storytelling is confidently restrained and overflowing with compassion, as it builds to one of the most quietly devastating final shots in years. The Quiet Girl is an intimate, beautifully realized take on finding what we need to heal our pain – and knowing when to rise up and meet it.

Outtakes

Fearless Oscar Predictions, 2023

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by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Things look a little more predictable this year than in years past, but who knows? There’s usually some drama, some upsets, possibly some face slapping. Who can really predict it? We are here to try.

Best Director

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert will need a wheelbarrow by the time this year’s Oscar ceremony is over. Their delightful, heart wrenching, hilarious Everything Everywhere All at Once is likely to clean up. We certainly think they’ll take home the award for directing.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

For a while, it felt like Colin Farrell and Brendan Fraser were neck and neck for this one. The SAG may have sealed the deal for Fraser, though, which is why we predict he’ll take home the statuette.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

The Daniels created an opportunity for veteran badass Michelle Yeoh to play a frustrated laundromat owner, a glamorous starlet, a lover with hot dog fingers, and many other characters. Yeoh had to give each Evelyn Wang a unique personality as well as connecting characteristics. And then, on top of all that, Yeoh had to find an arc for the main Evelyn. This was a deceptively complicated gig, but you’d never know that watching the final product. Yeoh is breathtaking in a film that knows how to showcase her talent, and Oscar will reward her.

Best Supporting Actor

It’s hard not to root for the effervescent and endearing Ke Huy Quan, who will likely win for his performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Hopefully it won’t go overlooked that, in playing several versions of the same character, the film gave the actor a chance to show off acting chops we simply never knew he had. It’s a beautiful, tender performance deserving of the prize.

Best Supporting Actress

While early momentum favored the glorious Angela Bassett in her powerful turn in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, things seem now to point to Jamie Lee Curtis for her performance as Deirdre Beaubierdre (best character name ever!) in Everything Everywhere All at Once. There is tremendous goodwill toward both veterans, but all signs now are pointing toward JLC.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Thanks to the Writers Guild award (a heavy Oscar predictor), we are beyond thrilled to predict that Sarah Polley’s Women Talking will win the Oscar for Adapted screenplay. A beautiful, tender, brave and glorious film, we are really hoping this is the case.

Best Original Screenplay

The key word here is original, because there are few contenders as truly original as The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Best Animated Feature

2022 was a great year for animation, and our pick is GdT’s Pinocchio.

Best Documentary Feature

We’re going with All That Breathes.

Best International Feature

All Quiet on the Western Front seems the likely winner.

Best Cinematography

It should be Bardo, but the nomination feels like the best the Academy is going to do for a film nobody saw on the big screen it deserved. Our pick is James Friend for All Quiet on the Western Front.

Best Score

Our gut says Justin Hurwitz for Babylon.

Best Original Song

This will be the year of EEAAO, so we’re tempted to go with “This Is a Life.” But instead, we’re picking “Naatu Naatu” from the ridiculously entertaining RRR.

Best Film

It would be a true shock to see anything but Everything Everywhere All at Once win the top prize this year. The momentum is clearly there, and why not? It’s the most original, charming, creative film to be recognized by the Academy in ages. Well deserved!

The 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 at 8pm on ABC.

Outtakes

Skinamarink Screening with Director Kyle Edward Ball at Gateway

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In partnership with the Greater Columbus Film Commission, Gateway FIlm Center has announced that acclaimed new filmmaker, Kyle Edward Ball, will visit the Center on Saturday, March 18, to premiere a 35mm version of his film, Skinamarink (2023).

“We are excited to welcome Kyle to Columbus, to the Film Center, and to share the 35mm print of his incredible independent film, Skinamarink” said Gateway Film Foundation CEO, Christopher Hamel.

In Skinamarink (2023), two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party situation. They play well worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while it becomes clear that something is watching over them.

The film stars Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul and Jaime Hill and is executive produced by Edmon Rotea, Ava Karvonen, Bonnie Lewis, Alan Lewis, Josh Doke, and Jonathan Barkan.

Ball, a first-time filmmaker, made Skinamarink (2023), which premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, for about $15,000. Since the film’s debut, it has become an instant cult classic, often compared to micro-budget horror hits such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007). However, Skinamarink is not found-footage or improvised, but is fully scripted and features images, sounds, and camera angles which were created to add depth and discomfort.

Shudder and IFC FIlms released Skinamarink (2023) in the United States on Friday, January 13, 2023. Gateway Film Center was selected as one of the first venues to feature the film and the Center has continuously screened Skinamarink (2023) since the release in January. To date, Skinamarink (2023) has grossed over two million dollars in the United States, making it one of the most successful and profitable independent films of all-time.

“Members of our community continue to hear about this film and want to experience it the way it was intended, with an audience and on a big screen. The Film Center is proud that we continue to present the film and I know Kyle’s visit, and this 35mm screening, will be a great event for Columbus”, said Hamel.

Tickets for these screenings are on sale now at gatewayfilmcenter.org. The 35mm presentation of Skinamarink (2023) on Saturday, March 18 will screen at 7:00pm exclusively for myGFC Members alongside a workshop co-presented with Film Columbus. The 9:30pm screening will be introduced by the filmmaker and is now on sale. Normal ticket prices apply. MaddWolf’s Hope Madden and George Wolf will moderate the q&a session following the 7:00pm performance.


Gateway Film Center is wholly owned by the Gateway Film Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Campus Partners, The Columbus Foundation, and thousands of individual donors. To learn more, visit the website at gatewayfilmcenter.org.

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Frenemy Mine

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Creed III

by George Wolf

Re-igniting the Rocky franchise by way of Apollo Creed’s son was a genius move by writer/director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan. Better still, 2015’s Creed was a tremendously effective example of honoring the past while looking toward the future.

Coogler stepped aside for Creed II five years ago, and while that film seemed a bit more calculated, it had the sentiment, heart and conviction to come out a winner. Plus, it gave the Rocky Balboa character a respectful signal that things would be moving on without him, a choice that seems right (well, mostly right) for Creed III.

Jordan again brings the fire in the title role, and also makes a fine debut behind the camera, directing a somewhat wandering script from Keenan Coogler (Ryan’s brother) and Zach Baylin (an Oscar nominee last year for King Richard).

We find Adonis and Bianca (Tessa Thompson, always a treat) Creed now parents of young Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) and transitioning to new professional roles. Bianca’s now more of a music producer than a performer, and “Donny” has similarly retired from the ring to open a gym and manage new heavyweight champ Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez).

And then Donny’s childhood friend Damien “Dame” Anderson shows up, which means Jonathan Majors shows up. And neither one of them are playin’.

Majors commands the screen with a portrait that recalls Max Cady in Cape Fear. Like DeNiro, Majors makes sure Dame’s early smiles don’t mask the violent intent of his Adonis agenda. A fateful event years earlier put the two young friends on different paths, and Dame has come to take what he feels should have been his all along.

Jordan, Coogler and Baylin wisely realized that after two Creed films built around Rocky bloodlines, it was time to freshen the stakes. And aside from one blatant bit of contrivance, this new feud has roots that feel authentic, thanks in large part to the terrific performances from both Majors and Jordan.

But the film has shaky legs when it strays from the two rivals. Threads about Amara’s interest in fighting and Mary-Anne Creed’s (Phylicia Rashad) health problems seem desperate to find some resonance. And though Rocky’s name is mentioned once or twice, he’s strangely missing from the one moment when it would make the most organic sense to include him, even in passing.

Director Jordan steers the ship gamely, keeping his eye on where these films deliver their emotional highs. It’s the same place his camerawork will impress the most: the ring.

By now, we know the torrid pace of the action, the superhero stamina of the fighters and the stilted commentary from the ringside announcers will be less than authentic. But here, the boxing sequences accept their cinematic pass and soar, elevated by Jordan’s new vision. The camera bobs, weaves, and clinches, with blows landing even harder via slow-motion and one completely stop-the-presses sequence that wows unlike anything seen in the entire Rocky universe.

Nearly fifty years later, who could have imagined that surprise Oscar winner would have such a legacy? But Creed III is more proof that this is Donny’s time to fly now. And Jordan’s.