Tag Archives: George Wolf

Fright Club

Fright Club: Feminist High School Horror

Leave a comment

High school can be a tough time. What the youth of today need are role models. Soul eaters. Werewolves. Witches. Girls who know their way around a power drill. There’s so much the teens in these films can teach us!

5. Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

There is a wild juxtaposition at work beneath what could be mistaken as a trope-riddled slasher. Director/co-writer Amy Holden Jones, writing with Rita Mae Brown, deliver over-the-top cliche (teens in a sleepover undressing in full view of a window, one wearing a negligee, etc.), laughably phallic imagery (that power drill!), and the very traditional hack ’em up stuff.

But the behavior of these high school girls at the sleepover, and the one across the street pining to be part of the group, is so wildly masculine it’s hilarious. One hides a Play Girl magazine (the one with Stallone on the cover!) under her pillow, while those undressing together discuss the play of then-Cleveland Browns quarterback Brian Sipe.

The combination of elements subvert expectations even as they wallow in cliche. It’s such a great B-movie that even Tarantino lifted one scene wholesale for his masterpiece, Pulp Fiction.

4. The Craft (1996)

Three Catholic high school outcasts find solace in each other, a coven they create for safety, escape, harmony, and camaraderie. Fairuza Balk is perfection as Nancy, the loose cannon leader of the group. And even though dreamboat asshole Chris (Skeet Ulrich) prefers new girl Sarah (Robin Tunney), Nancy and the coven (Neve Campbell and Rachel True) embrace her.

And that’s what they needed to find real power. With their fourth they learn that power sometimes only amplifies problems. But it’s great while it lasts, and Nancy turns into one of the best badasses in 90s horror.

3. Jennifer’s Body (2009)

If Ginger Snaps owes a lot to Carrie (and it does), then Jennifer’s Body finds itself even more indebted to Ginger Snaps.

The central premise: Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them. Better still, lure them to an isolated area and eat them, leaving their carcasses for the crows. This is the surprisingly catchy idea behind this coal-black horror comedy.

In for another surprise? Megan Fox’s performance is spot-on as the high school hottie turned demon. Director Karyn Kusama’s film showcases the actress’s most famous assets, but also mines for comic timing and talent other directors apparently overlooked.

Amanda Seyfried’s performance as the best friend, replete with homely girl glasses and Jan Brady hairstyle, balances Fox’s smolder, and both performers animate Diablo Cody’s screenplay with authority. They take the Snaps conceit and expand it – adolescence sucks for all girls, not just the outcasts.

2. Knives and Skin (2019)

Falling somewhere between David Lynch and Anna Biller in the under-charted area where the boldly surreal meets the colorfully feminist, writer/director Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin offers a hypnotic look at Midwestern high school life.

Knives and Skin’s pulpy noir package lets Reeder explore what it means to navigate the world as a female. As tempting as it is to pigeonhole the film as Lynchian, Reeder’s metaphors, while fluid and eccentric, are far more pointed than anything you’ll find in Twin Peaks.

And everyone sings impossibly appropriate Eighties alt hits acapella. Even the dead.

1. Ginger Snaps (2000)

Sisters Ginger and Bridget, outcasts in the wasteland of Canadian suburbia, cling to each other, and reject/loathe high school (a feeling that high school in general returns).

On the evening of Ginger’s first period, she’s bitten by a werewolf. Writer Karen Walton cares not for subtlety: the curse, get it? It turns out, lycanthropy makes for a pretty vivid metaphor for puberty. This turn of events proves especially provocative and appropriate for a film that upends many mainstay female cliches.

Walton’s wickedly humorous script stays in your face with the metaphors, successfully building an entire film on clever turns of phrase, puns and analogies, stirring up the kind of hysteria that surrounds puberty, sex, reputations, body hair and one’s own helplessness to these very elements. It’s as insightful a high school horror film as you’ll find, peppered equally with dark humor and gore.

New In Theaters

Again Tonight They’re Gonna Rock You Tonight

Leave a comment

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

by George Wolf

In the 41 years since the iconic This Is Spinal Tap, the “mockumentary” approach has become so prevalent that even Christopher Guest (Best in Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, etc.) admitted he doesn’t see much point in returning to the form he’s executed so brilliantly over the years.

The point of doing just that for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is clearly nostalgic fun, something the film manages just enough of to please longtime devotees.

Guest (David St. Hubbins) reunites with Michael McKean (Nigel Tufel), Harry Schearer (bassist Derek Smalls), and director Rob Reiner (director Marty DiBergi) to catch up with the Tap as they come together for the first time in 15 years.

It’s a logical catalyst for another mock, and a perfectly organic excuse to reach out to some famous drummers (settling on Valerie Franco as Didi Crockett), welcome some legends (Sir Paul, Sir Elton) and break out the classics. “Big Bottom,” “Bitch School,” “Cups and Cakes,” “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” and more are all still hilarious bangers, and the hit parade gets to the heart of what this movie does best: remind you how much you still love the first one.

This film feels more slight than usual, and the 82 minute running time is littered with brief reunions (Bobbi Fleckman, Artie Fufkin, Jeanine) and flashbacks to scenes from the original. It all seems a bit like the gang didn’t really have enough “A” material for a feature, but gave it a go for old times sake.

And for that sake, it works well enough. The “these go to eleven” and Stonehenge bits get well-played homages, Sir Elton is a gas and a few of the deadpan punchlines hit home. But if you’re expecting the elderly rock star bit to get the same level of inspired skewering the young rockers did four decades ago, forget it.

Tap II just plays the hits.

New In Theaters

The Cost of Doing Business

Leave a comment

The Man in My Basement

by George Wolf

You see Willem Dafoe is starring in a film called The Man in My Basement, and you suspect things could get freaky – in ways both hilarious and perverse. But if you’re at all familiar with Walter Mosley’s source novel, you know this basement business will deal in the bonds of history, the questions of philosophy and the responsibility of heritage.

The basement belongs to Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), an African American man in Sag Harbor whose life is slowly unraveling. With his parents deceased, Charles lives alone in his ancestral home, surrounded by artifacts he only values for possible sale.

Unemployed, Charles spends his days drinking, gambling and aimlessly drifting through life. With no motivation or prospects, Charles has little hope of saving the house from foreclosure, until Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) shows up on his door with an unusual offer.

If Bennet can rent the basement of the house, he’ll pay Charles one thousand dollars a day for 65 days. And he’ll pay in cash. What luck.

But of course, once Bennet moves in, Charles begins to discover the strings attached to the offer, and director Nadia Latif – adapting the screenplay with Mosley – zeroes in on the psychological battle downstairs.

Hawkins is impressive, with an understated approach that lends valuable authenticity to Charles’s gradual awakening. Through conversations with Bennet, and his growing friendship with a local curator (Anna Diop), Charles begins to the see the world – and his place in it – in an important new light.

Bennet’s unusual charm seems effortless for Dafoe. Is he angel or devil? Teacher or student? Prisoner or warden? From the minute Bennet’s offer is accepted, you know there will be consequences, and Dafoe has little problem upping the ante with a persuasive intensity.

Latif’s defiant final shot lands more securely than the attempts to paint the film as more of a danger-filled thriller than it really is. Charles’s nightmares seem more tailored to beefing up the trailer than the narrative, ultimately adding to a frustrating superficiality that dulls the edges of otherwise compelling themes.

The meaningful weight is found in the back and forth between Charles and Bennet. Hawkins and Dafoe flesh out both similarities and differences, and how each man is changed from the encounter. It is in these moments that the film finds its voice, and you end up wanting to push aside the overt symbolism, hoping to find a little more boundary pushing.

New In Theaters

Walk This Way

Leave a comment

The Long Walk

by Hope Madden

How fitting that Stephen King’s capitalist dystopian nightmare The Long Walk has finally been brought to the screen by director Francis Lawrence. Having helmed four Hunger Games films, including the most recent prequel, The Hunger Games: Ballad of Sonbirds & Snakes, he knows his way around these battles for what crumbs the wealthy deign to throw.

Based on King’s 1979 novel, the film follows a group of young men, each of whom signed up for and were chosen to participate in a last man standing competition: one road, one winner, no finish line. Walk until there’s no one else walking. The catch is that you can’t quit. Hell, you can’t even slow down. You walk until you die, either of exhaustion or by bullet spray (should you break the rules).

Lawrence has gathered a talented cast for these characters, beginning with everybody’s nemesis, the condescending voice of support and doom bellowing from the megaphone. Mark Hamill plays The Major with the perfect combination of swagger and benevolence to be contemptible without veering into caricature.

As Ray, our hero, Cooper Hoffman impresses, even when he’s saddled with King’s unfortunately quaint dialog. The camaraderie among the “four musketeers”— Ray, Pete (David Jonsson), Arthur (Tut Nyuot), and Hank (Ben Wang)—feels contrived from the beginning, Still, Cooper and Jonsson (so impressive in Alien: Romulus) share genuine chemistry, each elevating scenes with a glance, a shrug, a change in tone. Hoffman, in particular, plays nimbly with each of the other marchers, always delivering exactly the tone needed to keep someone’s head on straight and feet moving forward. Unsurprisingly, his moments with the invaluable Judy Greer (as Ray’s mother) are tender and heartbreaking.

This is a story most have deemed unfilmable given the utterly straightforward narrative. Cinematically, there’s not a lot you can do besides walk alongside 50 or so actors as they dwindle in number. There’s little opportunity to show rather than tell. Characters are defined by their dialog, and often, they’re narrowly etched.

But JT Mollner (Strange Darling) finds sly opportunities to broaden what is essentially a war metaphor—soldiers walking side by side, friendly enough but each hoping he’s the one who survives. Mollner and Lawrence subtly draw attention to the dystopian capitalist spectacle of boys walking themselves into an early grave, all so the rest of the country can watch and learn to be good, hard workers.  

The Long Walk, as is always the case, will upset King purists because of its handful of plot changes. But when it comes to delivering a cinematic experience with an unfilmable novel, the movie’s a winner.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Evil Uncles in Horror Movies

Leave a comment

Did Shakespeare start it all with Uncle Claudius? Maybe, but horror movies have really dug in. Yes, there are some excellent uncles, like drunky Uncle Red from Silver Bullet. That guy was the best! But that’s not what we’re after, and author Eric Miller, writer of the new novel Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed? knows a thing or two about uncles and horror, so he’s joined us to count them down!

5. Uncle Maurice, Possum (2018)

Sean Harris is endlessly sympathetic in this tale of childhood trauma. Philip (Harris) has returned to his burned out, desolate childhood home after some unexplained professional humiliation. His profession? Puppeteer. The puppet itself seems to be a part of the overall problem.

I don’t know why the single creepiest puppet in history—a man-sized marionnette with a human face and spider’s body—could cause any trouble. Kids can be so delicate.

Writer/director Matthew Holness spins a smalltown mystery around the sad story of a grown man who is confused about what’s real and what isn’t. As Uncle Maurice, Alun Armstrong cuts as dilapidated and corrosive a figure as Philip’s home and memories themselves. The melancholy story and Harris’s exceptional turn make Possum a tough one to forget.

4. Michael Myers, Halloween 4, 5 & 6 (1988, 1989, 1995)

In 1988, no one realized the Halloween franchise could be saved. Tarnished by the (now unreasonably popular and beloved) Halloween III, The Return of Michael Myers was expected to be a last gasp. it was not. The film, about the adorable little orphan left behind when Laurie Strode and her husband died in a car wreck, Halloween 4 not only saved the franchise with its remarkable popularity, but gave the slumping slasher genre a boost.

Danielle Harris starred, charming her way into our hearts as surely as the child in peril plot line kept us engaged. The film did so surprisingly well that it spawned a quickly slapped together, wildly inferior sequel a year later, also starring Harris. And then, to beat a dead horse and absolutely horrify anyone with fond memories of little Jamie, 1995’s Halloween 6 turns Myers from and uncle to a great uncle/father. Yeesh.

3. Uncle Kouzuki, The Handmaiden (2016)

Director Park Chan-wook had already investigated the influence of a sinister uncle in the woefully underseen Stoker in 2013. In 2016, that not-so-stable branch of the family tree inspires the auteur to mesmerize again with this seductive story of a plot to defraud a Japanese heiress in the 1930s.

Weird is an excellent word to describe this film. Gorgeous and twisty with criss-crossing loyalties and deceptions, all filmed with such stunning elegance. Set in Korea, the film follows a young domestic (Kim TAe-ri) in a sumptuous Japanese household. She’s to look after the beautiful heiress (KimMin-hee), a woman whose uncle (Cho Jin-woong) is as perverse and creepy as he is wealthy.

Smart and wicked, stylish and full of wonderful twists, The Handmaiden is a masterwork of delicious indulgence.

2. Uncle Charlie, Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Alfred Hitchcock did the most damage with his mother/son relationships, but the unnerving bond between Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) and her favorite Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) picks some festering scabs.

After a series of heiress murders, Charlie heads to smalltown America to lay low with his older sister, who adores him. Loves him so much, she named her oldest after him, even though it was a daughter. And oh, newly teenaged Charlie is a firebrand and just as spunky and smart as her namesake!

The film examines narcissism as unnervingly as any ever has, Uncle Charlie an amiable enough guy, and he might really regret having to murder his niece. All within that weirdly stilted performance style Hitchcock preferred, the cracks and anxieties and almost sexual innuendos play against the wholesome Midwest aesthetic in a way that gnaws at you.

1. Uncle Frank, Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s feature directing debut, worked not only as a grisly splatterfest, but also as a welcome shift from the rash of teen slasher movies that followed the success of Halloween. Barker was exploring more adult, decidedly kinkier fare, and Hellraiser is steeped in themes of S&M and the relationship between pleasure and pain.

Hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) solves an ancient puzzle box, which summons the fearsome Cenobites, who literally tear Frank apart and leave his remains rotting in the floorboards of an old house. Years later, Frank’s brother moves into that house with his teenage daughter Kirsty (Ashley Lawrence), who begins to unravel the freaky shit Uncle Frank and stepmom Julia (an amazing Clare Higgins) get up to.

Smart, weird, transgressive, and most importantly, CENOBITES!

Fright Club

Fright Club Extra: The Long Walk

Leave a comment

It was so cool to get to host the Columbus premier of the new Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk! We’re grateful to the great crowd at Gateway Film Center for joining us for the screening and for sticking around for a spoiler-free chat about the movie.

New In Theaters

Say Yes to This

Leave a comment

Hamilton

by George Wolf

Five years after Hamilton hit streaming, who ever could have predicted its lesson of resisting a dictator would feel even more urgent?

I know, plenty of people. Still, after all the sold out performances, the Tony awards, the historical debates and a Pulitzer, the worldwide phenomenon that is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton finally comes to theaters.

Number one, if you’re somehow new to Hamilton, you’re going to discover what a fantastic show it is. But then the exhilarating nature of this movie is how well it translates the live theater experience to the big screen. And they are two totally different entertainment experiences, so what director Thomas Kail pulls off here is not easy.

The difference between seeing something live and feeling the energy exchange between cast and audience, as opposed to watching it on a screen where you’re removed from the human element of it, is often hard to overcome. (Remember Cats?) But Kail – who also directed the 2016 Broadway shows that were recorded for this film – has crafted a near perfect mix of spatial movement and character intimacy.

This original Broadway cast, including Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Anthony Ramos, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Groff, Chris Jackson and even a pre-Oscar Ariana DuBose in the ensemble, is spectacular. Miranda’s sing-through soundtrack is littered with highlights from “My Shot”, “The Schuyler Sisters”, “Say No to This”, and “Helpless”, to “Satisfied”, “The Room Where It Happens”, “Burn” and King George’s delightfully mad trilogy.

The technical craftsmanship here never suffers a misstep. Kail makes sure we get close enough to see the sweat (and sometimes the spittle) on the actors’ faces, before pulling back to showcase choreography, set construction and the artful, hypnotic movement of the entire production. Jonah Moran’s editing is downright masterful, displaying a wonderful instinct for layering intimate moments and energetic flow.

And even more so today than when it first hit Disney+, the film reminds us how hard it was to birth this country. Of course Miranda took creative liberties, but time has only increased the weight of this lesson in the price of democracy, and the importance of fighting for it.

Half a decade later, Hamilton still stands as a high water mark for bringing a stage musical to the screen. It’s hard to imagine it being done any better.

New In Theaters

War Rooms

Leave a comment

The Roses

by George Wolf

If you’re anything like me, you’d pay to see Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch do anything from cranking up polka music to telling a story about a rucksack full of coke and a sword. Well, good news for both of us. They do all that and plenty more in The Roses, a fun and funny update of The War of the Roses from 36 years ago.

Director Jay Roach starts with a flashback (and some nifty de-aging) to give us the impulsive and passionate start to Theo (Cumberbatch) and Ivy’s (Colman) relationship. Ten years later and the married Brits have moved to California where he’s an architect, she’s a part-time culinary artist and they have two pre-teens.

Life is good, until the worst night of Theo’s professional life also gives Ivy a springboard to becoming a celebrity chef. Three more years go by, and she’s the jet-setting breadwinner while he’s staying home and raising the kids via a regimented, competitive style that Ivy always resented.

Colman and Cumberbatch are perfection, with an instant chemistry that lets the cracks in the marriage seem organic and relatable. Trouble is brewing, and it’s sensed by their group of friends Including Zoe Chao, Andy Samberg and a priceless Kate McKinnon as a woman not shy about awkwardly exploring social boundaries.

It’s all very clever and witty in an acerbic and oh-so-British sort of way, until screenwriter Tony McNamara adds some good ol’ American meanness to the mix. From then on, The Roses gets laugh-out-loud funny. McNamara (The Favourite, Poor Things) serves up a riotous contrast between the American and British ways of arguing, and this cast brilliantly turns his phrases into moments of joyful vitriol.

Then, for the push over the cliff, Alison Janney strolls in with a fire-breathing cameo as a brutal divorce lawyer, and the down-and-dirty battle we’ve been waiting for finally begins.

Anyone who remembers the original will appreciate the subtle twist of this war’s end. But The Roses has no trouble standing on its own. Sharply written, nicely paced and impeccably performed, it’s a winning adult comedy that finds big laughs inside some all too familiar modern foibles.