Watch the trailer for Wolfs, and you hear Sinatra front and center.
But watch the movie, and it’s Sade time, baby.
I get that the Apple marketing department wants you to remember the fun of Clooney and Pitt’s Ocean’s Eleven franchise, but this new venture crafts its effective charm from a more seedy vibe.
New York D.A. Margaret (Amy Ryan) has a problem. She’s covered with blood in a swanky hotel with a much younger man (Austin Abrams), and he’s half naked on the floor with no pulse.
Plus, that’s a lot of drugs.
Margaret calls a fixer (Clooney), who promises to make it all go away. But it’s Pam (Frances McDormand) running the hotel and she has her own man (Pitt), who shows up with identical claims of problem solving.
The rival lone wolves have no intention of teaming up, but fate has other ideas. So it’s going to be a long and bumpy night.
Years before Reynolds and Jackman started their good natured ribbing, Clooney and Pitt owned the “fun frenemy” schtick, and writer/director Jon Watts reminds us that their charisma still has plenty of life.
The deadpan sparring is a mischievous hoot, as Margaret’s Man and Pam’s Man each strive to be too cool for competition while secretly pining for the other’s respect. Watts (Cop Car, the Spider-Man “Home” franchise, TV’s The Old Man) creates a nice counterbalance via the uncool “Kid” (Abrams is terrific) and backs up the snappy dialog with understated visual gags (one Man slowly peering around the corner at embarrassing moments) and some pieces of stylish, well-staged action.
There’s a winning air of confidence to the film, and it’s not just from two A-listers secure in their movie star status. Wolfs isn’t trying to re-invent any genres, but Watts displays plenty of skill with plot twisty intrigue.
These fixers aren’t leading a team of good-hearted thieves, robbing people who probably deserve it and righting old wrongs. Yes, they’re still unreasonably handsome, but they are shady characters with bloody pasts and clearly compromised moral codes. They are interesting, in a Tarantino sort of way.
And they are in one helluva mess. How dirty will they have to get to clean it up?
You may be surprised. Just don’t expect Vegas, and you’ll be entertained.
What is it about a deep hole that is so profoundly terrifying? Is it the worry about what could be down there, waiting? Is it the claustrophobic terror of falling into the pit without hope of escape? Horror writers and filmmakers have exploited this particular primal dread for centuries. How many versions of The Pit and the Pendulum do we need to see to know Poe had struck a chord? There are two different (very worthy) films called The Hole, plus the lunatic horror The Pit, as well as John and the Hole, and of course, all the “buried alive” terror, like Ryan Reynolds’s Buried.
We want to peer way down in the hole to dig up our five favorite films from down in the pit.
5. The Hole in the Ground (2019)
Sara (Seána Kerslake), along with her bib overalls and young son Chris (James Quinn Markey), are finding it a little tough to settle into their new home in a very rural town. Chris misses his dad. Sara is having some life-at-the-crossroads anxiety.
Then a creepy neighbor, a massive sink hole (looks a bit like the sarlacc pit) and Ireland’s incredibly creepy folk music get inside her head and things really fall apart.
Writer/director Lee Cronin’s subtext never threatens his story, but instead informs the dread and guilt that pervade every scene. You look at your child one day and don’t recognize him or her. It’s a natural internal tension and a scab horror movies like to pick. Kids go through phases, your anxiety is reflected in their behavior, and suddenly you don’t really like what you see. You miss the cuter, littler version. Or in this case, you fear that inside your beautiful, sweet son lurks the same abusive monster as his father.
4. Jug Face (2013)
Writer/director Chad Crawford Kinkle brings together a fine cast including The Woman’s Sean Bridgers and Lauren Ashley Carter, as well as genre favorite Larry Fessenden and Sean Young to spin a backwoods yarn about incest, premonitions, kiln work, and a monster in a pit.
As a change of pace, Bridgers plays a wholly sympathetic character as Dawai, village simpleton and jug artist. On occasion, a spell comes over Dawai, and when he wakes, there’s a new jug on the kiln that bears the likeness of someone else in the village. That lucky soul must be fed to the monster in the pit so life can be as blessed and peaceful as before.
Kinkle mines for more than urban prejudice in his horror show about religious isolationists out in them woods. Young is particularly effective as an embittered wife, while Carter, playing a pregnant little sister trying to hide her bump, a jug, and an assortment of other secrets, steals the show.
3. I’m Not Scared (2003)
Director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) crafts a perfect, gripping, breathless thriller with his Italian period piece. In a tiny Southern Italian town, kids run through lushly photographed fields on the hottest day of the year. They’re playing, and also establishing a hierarchy, and with their game Salvatores introduces a tension that will not let up until the last gasping breaths of his film.
Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) sees a boy down a deep hole on a neighboring farm. The boy, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), believes he is dead and Michele is an angel. But the truth is far more sinister. I’m Not Scared is a masterpiece of a thriller.
2. Onibaba (1964)
Lush and gorgeous, frenzied and primal, spooky and poetic, Kaneto Shindô’s folktale of medieval Japan scores on every level, and Hiraku Hayashi’s manic score keeps you dizzy and on edge.
An older woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) survive by murdering lost samurai and looting their goods.
Passions and jealousy, a deep pit and a dangerous mask, some of the most glorious cinematography you’ll see all combine with brooding performances to create a remarkable nightmare.
1. The Descent (2005)
A bunch of buddies get together for a spelunking adventure. One is still grieving a loss – actually, maybe more than one – but everybody’s ready for one of their outdoorsy group trip.
Writer/director Neil Marshall begins his film with an emotionally jolting shock, quickly followed by some awfully unsettling cave crawling and squeezing and generally hyperventilating, before turning dizzyingly panicky before snapping a bone right in two.
And then we find out there are monsters.
Long before the first drop of blood is drawn by the monsters – which are surprisingly well-conceived and tremendously creepy – the audience has already been wrung out emotionally.
The grislier the film gets, the more primal the tone becomes, eventually taking on a tenor as much like a war movie as a horror film. This is not surprising from the director that unleashed Dog Soldiers – a gory, fun werewolf adventure. But Marshall’s second attempt is far scarier. For full-on horror, this is one hell of a monster movie.
Speak No Evil is in a tough spot. Essentially, you’re either a moviegoer who will breathe easier this weekend knowing you’ll never again have to sit through the excruciating trailer, you’re a potentially interested horror fan, or you’re a horror fanatic wary that director James Watkins will pull punches landed by Christian Tafdrup’s almost unwatchably grim but genuinely terrifying 2022 original.
Well, Watkins does not pull those punches, but they do land differently.
Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are vacationing blandly in Italy with their 11-year-old, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) when a louder, more alive family catches Ben’s attention.
Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and their quiet lad Ant (Dan Hough) seem to be living life large, and Ben can’t help but envy that. So, after the Daltons are tucked blandly back into their London flat and he receives a postcard from their vacation pals inviting them out to the countryside, how can he say no?
We all know he should have said no, but that’s not how horror movies happen.
What follows is a horror of manners, and very few genres are more agonizing than that. Little by little by little, alone and very far from civilization, the Daltons’ polite respectability is jostled and clawed and eventually, of course, gutted.
Those familiar with Watkins’s work, especially his remarkable and remarkably unpleasant Eden Lake, needn’t worry that he’ll let you off the hook. This is not the sanitized English language version fans of the original feared.
Indeed, Watkins and a game cast highlighted by a feral McAvoy stick to Tafdrup’s script for better than half of the film. Watkins, who adapted the original script, complicates relationships and gives the visiting Dalton parents more backbone, but he doesn’t neuter the grim story being told. Instead, he ratches up tension, provides a more coherent backstory, and pulls out the big guns in Act 3.
If you’ve seen the original, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the direction the remake takes. Though it can feel like a correction aimed at pleasing a wider audience, it also makes for a more satisfying film.
Fanciosi is carving out a career of wonderfully nuanced genre performances (Nightingale, Stopmotion). We learned in 2017 with Split that McAvoy can do anything. Anything at all. He proves that here with a ferocious turn, evoking vulnerability and contempt sometimes in the same moment. It’s a compelling beast he creates, and no wonder weary travelers fall under his spell.
Watkins doesn’t make enough movies. For his latest he’s chosen a project with the narrowest chance of success. But here’s hoping he finds it.
Thirty-two years later, Spanish auteur Víctor Erice returns with his fourth feature, Close Your Eyes (Cerrar los ojos), a patiently exquisite study of memory, identity, and the reflecting power of film.
Former film director Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) spends his days in a fishing village on the coast of Spain. He reads, writes the occasional short story, and dodges the conspiracy theories that still exist about his old friend Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado).
In 1990, Julio was starring in Miguel’s film The Farewell Gaze when he disappeared without a trace. The mystery is being revisited on TV’s “Unresolved Cases,” and Miguel travels to Madrid for his guest appearance.
The broadcast prompts a call from a woman from an elder care home in another Spanish village. There is a handyman they call Gardel who tends the grounds and keeps to himself. She is sure it is Julio.
Miguel must confirm this for himself, and the journey back through his past includes reconnecting with his film editor (Mario Pardo), a former lover (Soledad Villamil), Julio’s daughter (Ana Torrent), and one painful, tragic memory.
Erice (El Sur, The Spirit of the Beehive) sets a pace that is unhurried but necessary, and he fills the nearly three-hour running time with exquisite shot making, insightful dialog and meaningful silences. He also crafts the film-within-a-film as a compelling narrative in its own right, one that adds important elements to the touching and deeply resonant finale.
Now in his mid-eighties, Erice makes Close Your Eyes more than just a rumination on “how to grow old.” Expertly assembled and deceptively understated, it is a beautiful ode to the pleasure, pain, friendships and memories of a life well lived.
Maybe Kevin Smith saw Sam Mendes, James Gray and Spielberg all come out of the pandemic with reflections on their film-loving early years. Or maybe he just liked the taste of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza.
Either way, The 4:30 Movie finds Smith looking back with wistful zaniness at a pivotal time in his own life: 1986.
High school Junior Brian David (Austin Zajur from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Smith’s own Clerks III) just can’t quit thinking about that time he made out with cute Sophomore Melody Barnegot (Siena Agudong, the Resident Evil TV series) in her backyard pool.
For some reason, Brian didn’t immediately follow up on that makeout sesh. But now he’s ready to ask for an official date, and they make plans to meet for the 4:30 screening of Bucklick (which, based on the theater poster, is the original Fletch).
But how they gonna sneak past the crazy theater manager (Ken Jeong) and into an R-rated flick? Turns out that’s just one of the obstacles standing between these kids and a movie.
You’ve also got Brian’s two friends (Reed Northrup, Nicholas Cirillo), their favorite wrestling entertainer (Sam Richardson), a Hot Usher (Genesis Rodriguez, and that is her character name), false accusations of perversion and a string of Smith regulars (Jason Mewes, Rosario Dawson, Jeff Anderson, Justin Long and Jason Lee).
I’ve laughed hard at some of Smith’s earlier movies, respected his blunt self-awareness and appreciated the moments when his frenetic dialog lands with earned insight. Here, while some overt Gen X reminiscing – bolstered by the closing Easter egg and blooper reel – may have a warmth about it, the charming core relationship between Brian and Melody gets lost. We’re pulling for them, but all the tangential and unnecessary diversions just end up working against the crude honesty that has marked Smith’s best work.
Few moments transcend beyond nostalgia, while the only laugh out loud sequence comes from mother/daughter Jennifer Schwalbach Smith and Harley Quinn Smith in Sugar Walls, the first of Kevin’s fake trailers. The other 85 minutes or so find humor that’s as obvious and forced as the speech from Hot Usher that lights a filmmaking fire in a young nerd.
The 4:30 Movie is certainly the Kevin Smith-iest of the filmmaker’s memory lanes we’ve been down recently. It’s also the most fractured and frustrating. Let’s hope his future is more rewarding.
On the heels of last weekend’s Little League World Series championship (congrats, Florida!) comes You Gotta Believe, a generically titled, broadly brushed “based on true events” story of one of the most memorable runs in LLWS history.
It’s 2002, and Texas Dads Jon Kelly (Greg Kinnear) and Bobby Ratliff (Luke Wilson) are coaching the worst Little League team in Fort Worth, when they get an unlikely offer. To keep the local sponsors happy, Kliff Young (Patrick “You’re killin’ me, Smalls!” Renna, the first of a few callbacks to better baseball movies) has to send one team to the LLWS qualifying tournament…so whaddya say?
What could possibly turn these cellar dwellers into the Good News Bears? Thanks to writer Lane Garrison and director Ty Roberts, it’s a mix of some tragically bad news, and one shamelessly bad trope.
Coach Ratliff is diagnosed with aggressive melanoma skin cancer, giving his son Robert (Michael Cash) and the rest of the team what local card shop owner Sam (Martin Roach) says they lack: something to rally behind. Sam, apparently the only African American in town, also quickly turns the team’s pitcher into an ace. And though he doesn’t get a coaching offer, Sam still comes to the games to cheer for the boys while seeming to interact with absolutely no one else.
Magical? No, it’s crap.
As the “Westside All Stars” start winning, Garrison and Roberts keep the film perched on the edges of the faith-based genre. But while the preaching here is minimized, there is that familiar feeling of an audience being taken for granted. There’s little concern for depth or character development (Wilson doesn’t even pretend to go bald during his character’s courageous fight with chemo), an awkward singalong sequence, and a wait for authentic humanity that only ends when the real-life players show up in an epilogue.
Over 20 years ago, these Texas kids had an inspiring run in the face of tragedy, and since then have shown a commitment to cancer research. The story at the heart of You Gotta Believe is worthy. It’s just a shame that the storytelling thinks demanding we believe is all that’s required.
A small group of dedicated souls travel in deep space. Worn down by isolation and boredom, they start to question their commitment to the mission as they fight to keep a firm grip on reality.
Slingshot does not offer a groundbreaking premise. In fact, co-writer Nathan Parker took us on a similar ride in 2009 with Moon, a solid morality tale that pulled some of its punches on the trip home.
But here, it is the third act that rescues the film from the slog of familiarity, with director Mikael Håfström never completely tipping his hand until the last, well-executed reveal.
Casey Affleck stars as John, who is on board the Odyssey 1 with Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and fellow crewman Nash (Tomer Capone from The Boys). They are 9 months into an Earth-saving mission to Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons, but they will need to execute a tricky “slingshot” maneuver around Jupiter to make the trip successfully.
Trouble starts with adverse reactions to deep space hibernation. John sees visions of Zoe (Emily Beecham) – the love he left behind – while Nash becomes convinced the ship has taken on too much damage to complete the mission. Captain Franks is wondering if he can trust either one, and paranoia begins to envelope the Odyssey.
Performances are fine all around and set the stakes convincingly enough, as Håfström (Evil, The Rite) layers the romantic flashbacks with plenty of obligatory shots of Zoe rolling over and staring longingly from underneath the sheets.
Yes, yes, very nice. But what’s the endgame here?
Events get a welcome escalation once violence erupts. Håfström’s atmospherics help aid the tension and Affleck makes his character’s battle with sanity more believable than most. And though the script often invites you to catch on to what’s up, Slingshot finds an identity by seeing its vision through to the very end, a will-they-or-won’t-they moment that almost recalls the genius of Take Shelter.
9. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (Colin Strause, Greg Strause, 2007)
But we thought it would be fun to catch up with a couple of other big Alien nerds and hash it out. What worked with Alien: Romulus? What didn’t? Where does it fit within the pantheon and why? Is Alien 3 an underrated masterpiece? Is Alien Resurrection actually any good? And why were there so many vaginas in Romulus? So, so many.
We welcome two great friends of the podcast, filmmaker Timothy Troy and MaddWolf contributor and Schlocketeer, Daniel Baldwin. Beware: spoilers ahead! We’re going to pull this apart a bit, so if you haven’t seen Alien: Romulus (or any of the others, for that matter), be warned.
