Two-word titles available for home viewing this week. Do you want to watch a slick, important movie about that reminds you just how far America has fallen? Spielberg for you. Rather watch that same Liam Neeson movie you’ve grown to need somehow in your life? That’s here, too.
Click the film title for the full review.
Some big and bad—and some small and good—covered in this week’s Screening Room Podcast. We talk through Rampage, Truth or Dare, Where is Kyra? as well as what’s new and amazing in home entertainment.
Listen to the podcast HERE.
Sssshhhhh! We get too excited to keep our voices down, talking about A Quiet Place, Blockers, Isle of Dogs and the less exciting The Leisure Seeker, plus everything worth checking on in home entertainment.
Listen to the podcast HERE.
The relationship between mothers and daughters informs an awful lot of great horror films from The Exorcist to Black Swan. Frightmare suggests that becoming your mother is inescapable. The Woman tells us that if we can’t raise our daughters right, a more alpha mom might show up and do it for us. The Ring and Mom and Dad remind us that moms aren’t perfect. They have bad days. Sometimes they may want to drop you down a well.
We focus on five horror films where that relationship between mother and daughter informs and impacts the storyline in a substantial way.
The minute delicate Christine’s (Nancy Kelly) husband leaves for his 4-week assignment in DC, their way-too-perfect daughter begins to betray some scary behavior. The creepy handyman Leroy (Henry Jones) has her figured out – he knows she’s not as perfect as she pretends.
You may be tempted to abandon the film in its first reel, feeling as if you know where it’s going. You’ll be right, but there are two big reasons to stick it out. One is that Bad Seed did it first, and did it well, considering the conservative cinematic limitations of the Fifties.
Second, because director Mervyn LeRoy’s approach – not a single vile act appears onscreen – gives the picture an air of restraint and dignity while employing the perversity of individual imaginations to ramp up the creepiness.
Enough can’t be said about Patty McCormack. There’s surprising nuance in her manipulations, and the Oscar-nominated 9-year-old handles the role with both grace and menace.
It is the late 1980s in Perth, Australia, and at least one young girl has already gone missing when the grounded Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) sneaks out her bedroom window to attend a party. She doesn’t like staying with her mom, who left her dad and ruined the family and her life.
So she sneaks out, which isn’t nearly as dumb a move as is accepting a ride from Evie White (Emma Booth) and her husband, John (Stephen Curry).
Writer/director Ben Young’s amazing feature debut works on so many levels and showcases a master visual storyteller almost as brilliantly as it shines the light on three phenomenal performances.
What is it that may finally undo the evil the Whites have planned? One mother’s relentless devotion to her daughter and another mother’s sudden, stabbing empathy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNEurXzvHqE
Francisca’s mother had been an eye surgeon back in Portugal.
“We used to do dissections together. She always hoped I’d be a surgeon one day.”
Though Mom appears only in Act 1 of writer/director Nicolas Pesce’s modern horror masterpiece Eyes of My Mother, her presence echoes throughout the lonely farmhouse Francesca rarely leaves.
Yes, the skills her mother imparted coupled with the trauma Francesca faced bleeds together to create a character whose splintered psyche keeps her from seeing that she’s taking some extreme measures to cure her lonliness.
This is one of the most beautifully filmed horror movies ever made, and as impeccable as the cinematography, the sound is even more important and magnificent. Together with restrained performances and jarring images, Eyes of My Mother is a film that sticks around even after it’s gone. Like a mom.
There is a lot going wrong for poor Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). But it all starts when the baby goes missing on her watch. Her mother (Kate Dickie) never forgives her for it and soon Mother is finding faults with Thomasin, making accusations that even Father, who knows better, won’t defend.
For The Witch to work, for us to tentatively hope that Black Philip talks back, Thomasin has to basically lose everything, and it all starts with her mother’s love and respect. Soon her mother’s bitterness turns to competition for the affection of the menfolk, accusations of all sorts of wrongoing, all of which spirals out of control until Thomasin has no one left, no one who will love her and look after her, except that goat.
Robert Egger’s unerringly authentic deep dive into radicalization, gender inequality and isolation is all sparked with one act that irrevocably ruptures one relationship.
There is nobody quite like Margaret White. Oscar nominee Piper Laurie saw the zealot for all her potential and created the greatest overbearing mother film has ever seen. (We never did see Mrs. Bates, did we?)
Sissy Spacek (also Oscar nominated for her performance) is the perfect balance of freckle-faced vulnerability and awed vengeance. Her simpleton characterization would have been overdone were it not for Laurie’s glorious, evil zeal. It’s easy to believe this particular mother could have successfully smothered a daughter into Carrie’s stupor.
De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen streamline King’s meandering finale. Wise, because once the dance drama is done, we just want to find out what happens at home, and Mrs. White doesn’t disappoint.
by George Wolf
Even if you hated last year’s polarizing mother! (let’s argue about that later), Michelle Pfeiffer’s bracing performance was a reality check for anyone who doubted her chops.
But that was a supporting role well-suited for scene stealing. Pfeiffer takes the titular lead in Where is Kyra?, the latest from director Andrew Dosunmu, and not only carries, but elevates a film anchored in some grim realities of American life.
Her Kyra is an increasingly desperate woman struggling to keep her deceased mother’s apartment in Brooklyn. Though Kyra continues to look for work, nothing pans out except a dive-bar romance with Doug (Kiefer Sutherland – solid), a cabbie trying to turn his own life around.
Mom’s government checks keep coming after the funeral, and the job offers don’t, so Kyra begins a secret life with slim hopes for happy endings.
Dosunmu, in his first film since the heartfelt and wonderful Mother of George five years ago, re-ups with screenwriter Darci Picoult and again utilizes a stirring lead performance to study a woman faced with shrinking options and tough choices.
But in contrast to the culture clash that drove Danai Gurira in Mother of George, Pfeiffer’s Kyra personifies the perils of aging in America, and how quickly the slope to desperation can become quite slippery. Pfeiffer is masterful, giving Kyra’s tailspin an authentic center even as Dosunmu and Piccoult box her into a corner with questionable credibility.
Frequent partial shots through doorways, lingering close ups and selective slo-motion enable Dosunmu to move gracefully from monochromatic grit to dreamlike lenses and back again, each trip reinforcing the reality Kyra can’t wish away. The pace may seem achingly slow at times, the message a tad too manufactured at others, but Pfeiffer is always there to keep your attention from wandering.
She pays it small, with an intimately sorrowful center both sympathetic and fascinating, holding Where is Kyra? steady whenever its knees get shaky.
Good looking week this week for those of us too damn lazy to get off the couch. Oscar nominees, great directors, brilliant actors, songs, dances…hard to go wrong.
Click the movie title for the full review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSNwXMpntg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9QtXwC9vc
by George Wolf
Is it me, or is there an encouraging trend building here? In the last few years, mainstream teen comedies such as The Duff, The Edge of Seventeen and Love, Simon have shown more smarts and diversity, with less reliance on the same old same old pandering.
Blockers starts with a cliched teen sex premise – gotta get some before college! – and turns it sideways, managing solid laughs (and some self-aware winks at romance fantasies) in the process.
Julie, Sam, and Kayla (Kathryn Newton, Gideon Adlon, Geraldine Viswanathan) are three Chicago-area high school seniors who vow to all turn in their V-cards on prom night (so they can commemorate the occasion every year at the Olive Garden).
The girls’ respective parents (Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena) uncover the plans for “sexpact2018” (after a hilarious bit of emoji code-breaking) and set their own quest in motion: less cocking and more blocking.
Veteran writer Kay Cannon (30 Rock, the Pitch Perfect films) makes her directing debut, giving some nicely paced zest to the winning script from Brian Kehoe and Jim Kehoe. Even the film’s most outlandish moments (a “chugging” contest gone way wrong) seem to serve the film’s purpose.
Young adults are capable of making intelligent choices, and young women don’t need saving. Adults can be juvenile in their own self-interest, and some raunchy laughs can be had making all of those points.
Yes, the points come on a bit strong time and again, but the cast (especially Mann) keeps it lively and relatable. If Blockers means this movie trend is working, keep ’em coming.
Giggle.
by George Wolf
Pairing up Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland is a welcome idea with exciting potential. Much of that potential is left unexplored by The Leisure Seeker in favor of embarrassing schtick and cheap sentiment.
The veteran actors star as Ella and John Spencer, a senior couple in Massachusetts who bust out their old RV and run from the concerned grasp of their kids for a bucket list trip. John is a retired literature professor who has long idolized Hemingway, so Ella decides it’s time to visit the Hemingway House in Key West before John’s memory fades away completely.
This road trip setup, from the novel by Michael Zadoorian, is more organically sound than most, but soon gets exploited with easy pickings from two crops of low-hanging fruit.
Director and co-writer Paolo Virzi (Like Crazy) strings together the random, disconnected hijinx this genre seemingly demands, while also poking cliched fun at old people riding motorcycles, talking sex or packing heat. This laziness comes much too frequently, with punchlines based on age not action, bringing a stale odor to the goodwill earned from putting these two endlessly likable stars at the forefront.
Mirren and Sutherland are worth a better investment, and both end up working much too hard selling these warmed-over tropes, but the missed opportunities extend beyond the cast list.
Some worthy issues on aging come into view, only to be passed by or, worse yet, made light of, all in service of a maudlin conclusion you could see coming in the dark with no headlights. Expecting every film on senior issues to carry the magnificence of, say, Amour, would be unrealistic, but The Leisure Seeker hardly wanders beyond the Going in Style end of the pool.
Bad trip, man.
What’s new in home entertainment? Three movies you probably missed in theaters that deserve your attention and one dog. Choose wisely. Let us help.
Click the movie title for the full review.
This week’s Screening Room Podcast looks at Spielberg’s latest, Ready Player One, plus Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, Flower and what to look for in this week’s new home entertainment releases.
Check out the full podcast HERE.
