The Screening Room: Alien: Romulus, Didi, My Penguin Friend, The Union, Jackpot! & More
Tag Archives: Hope Madden
Half and Half
Close to You
by Hope Madden
“You were not worried about me when I was not OK.”
The quote is exactly the kind of lived-in epiphany you might expect from filmmaker Dominic Savage, whose work leans toward intimate improvisational dramas. In his latest, a young man, Sam (Elliot Page), returns home for the first time in four years—the first time since his transition. And though his family is supportive—almost giddily so—he dreads the trip because no matter who you are, your family is still on about their same shit.
So, Sam’s older sister’s concern about his job and his apartment and the stress he’s putting on his parents by staying away and how they’re all worried about him evokes a response that rings true no matter who your family is or how well you get along.
In these moments, Savage and Page, who gets a co-writing credit, unveil something so authentic that it’s impossible not to see both the uniqueness and the universality of their story. And Page is excellent, bringing an emotional depth and integrity to the character that reveals itself in scene after scene.
Close to You never wallows in tragedy or grief or pain, but in its best moments, it allows that sadness to singe its edges. The family drama builds relentlessly and honestly to something cathartic and difficult. Unfortunately, this is not really the story the filmmakers are telling. Savage balances the family drama with a romance. On the train in from Toronto, Sam runs into Katherine (Hillary Baack).
The two have history and a love story attempts to bloom, but it lacks all of the authenticity, detail and depth of the family drama. Nothing rings true, and the unstructured feel that gave the family’s storyline depth emphasizes emptiness in scenes between Page and Baack. Every time the film cuts away from the family to spend time in the budding relationship, you long to return to the unpleasantness of home.
When Savage finally abandons the family drama altogether in favor of the romance, the loose narrative feel becomes almost unbearable. Where early scenes spilled over with unspoken tensions and crackled with anxiety, later scenes meander and stall.
A stitched together whole of two unequal parts, Close to You leaves you wanting.
Trail Snacks
Consumed
by Hope Madden
The Wendigo is a presence that has proven hard to create on film. Ravenous—Antonia Bird’s 1999 small miracle of Western horror—conjures the spirit of the beast and comes off best. In her hands, the flesh consuming monster equates to the horrors of war.
For director Michael Altieri, working from a script by David Calbert, the mythical creature is a stand-in for cancer. It’s a great conceit, honestly, and one I wish had been executed a little more successfully.
Courtney Halverson plays Beth, who heads into the deep woods with her husband, Jay (Mark Famiglietti) to celebrate one year of remission. But the two are stalked by something terrifying and eventually fall into the hands of another person (Devon Sawa)—friend or foe, they can’t quite tell—as they plot their escape from the forest.
Altieri—formerly half of the Butcher Brothers (The Hamiltons, A Beginner’s Guide to Snuff, The Violent Kind), this time directing solo—soaks much production value from his two or three locations. A clear pro with limited means, Altieri makes the most of just three performers, generating dread and analogizing well.
The performers range in skill. Genre veteran Sawa convinces as the hunter with a past and an agenda and Famiglietti fares well enough as the supportive husband, although there’s not a lot to the role.
Most of the weight of the film lands on Halverson’s shoulders and she struggles early on, the layers of her conflicted emotions never taking authentic shape. She’s on more solid ground once Beth goes full badass, but without an early emotional hook for her character and relationship with her husband, you’re less invested in their survival.
More problematic is the presentation of the beast itself. Here the budget really makes itself known. Altieri oscillates between smoky swirls of digital FX and the shadowy presence of practical FX, but the combination is far from seamless. The film would have benefitted from sticking with practical and taking a less-is-more approach to what it showed.
It doesn’t entirely sink the production, but it does slow whatever momentum Consumed builds every time the beast arrives. Given its other setbacks, that’s enough to lessen the overall satisfaction the movie offers.
Odd Bird
My Penguin Friend
by Hope Madden
An old fisherman who’s never recovered from an unendurable loss saves the life of a little penguin. They become best friends. It’s a true story that was clearly designed by the movie gods, but luckily it fell into the hands of director David Schurmann, whose work may lean crowd-pleasing but never glossy or self-indulgent.
My Penguin Friend doesn’t need it. Though Act 1, introducing the tragedy that will haunt Joao (Jean Reno, a heartbreaking delight), does go a bit over the top in its cinematic tendencies, Schurmann and team settle into a more natural rhythm by the beginning of the second act.
Reno’s a broken, sunken old man who doesn’t go into town and hasn’t talked with his old fisherman friends in so long they barely remember. His wife Maria (Adriana Barraza, underused but as nuanced and authentic as ever) co-exists but the emptiness of their home is its own character.
Schurmann doesn’t rely on an imposing score or even a seasoned cast to manipulate our emotions, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it. It’s what he does not show in Act 1 that haunts Reno’s eyes and the surface of the ocean outside Joao and Maria’s window. Schurmann reminds us of what none of us could bear to see just often enough to make your breath catch for the fear that Joao might have to live through the heartbreak again.
Which would be unbearable if the film didn’t also offer the levity, goofiness and undeniable cuteness of this penguin who befriends Joao, baffles scientists, and swims 5000 miles from Argentina to Brazil every year or so to hang out and watch TV on the sofa with his buddy.
It’s about the dearest thing you’re ever going to see, which just about makes up for the fact that most of the ensemble has never acted and it shows. Any stretch of narrative without Reno feels twice as long as it is, but there is no denying the heartbreaking charm whenever he and Barraza are onscreen.
There are plenty of flaws that keep My Penguin Friend from really singing, but it’s not enough to dampen the joy to be found with this odd couple.
Fright Club: Teachers in Horror
Is there any time of year more horrifying than back to school? We share the misery, taking a gander at some of the most disturbing and most fun teachers in horror.
5. Little Monsters (2019)
Basically, Little Monsters is Cooties meets Life is Beautiful.
Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o, glorious as always) has taken her kindergarten class on a field trip. The petting zoo sits next door to a military testing facility, one thing eats the brains of another and suddenly Miss Caroline is hurdling zombies and convincing her class this is all a game.
Little Monsters is, in its own bloody, entrail-strewn way, adorable. Honestly. And so very much of that has to do with Nyong’o. Miss Caroline’s indefatigable devotion to her students is genuinely beautiful, and Nyong’o couldn’t be more convincing.
4. Diabolique (1955)
Pierre Boileau’s novel was such hot property that even Alfred Hitchcock pined to make it into a film. But Henri-Georges Clouzot got hold if it first. His psychological thriller with horror-ific undertones is crafty, spooky, jumpy and wonderful.
And it wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the weirdly lived-in relationship among Nicole (Simone Signoret) – a hard-edged boarding school teacher – and the married couple that runs the school. Christina (Vera Clouzot) is a fragile heiress; her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) is the abusive, blowhard school headmaster. Michel and Nicole are sleeping together, Christine knows, both women are friends, both realize he’s a bastard. Wonder if there’s something they can do about it.
What unravels is a mystery with a supernatural flavor that never fails to surprise and entrance. All the performances are wonderful, the black and white cinematography creates a spectral atmosphere, and that bathtub scene can still make you jump.
3. Cooties (2015)
Welcome to the dog eat dog and child eat child world of elementary school. Kids are nasty bags of germs. We all know it. It is universal truths like this that make the film Cooties as effective as it is.
What are some others? Chicken nuggets are repulsive. Playground dynamics sometimes take on the plotline of LORD OF THE FLIES. To an adult eye, children en masse can resemble a seething pack of feral beasts Directing team Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion harness those truths and more – each pointed out in a script penned by a Leigh Whannell-led team of writers – to satirize the tensions to be found in an American elementary school.
2. Suspiria (2018)
Yes, we did choose the 2018 Guadagnino reboot. Argento’s 1977 original is magical and boasts super sadistic teachers. But none of them is played by Tilda Swinton, so—for this list—Guadagnino’s wins.
Swinton is glorious, isn’t she? And her chemistry with Dakota Johnson as Susie Bannion draws you into the story of the American ballet student who finds herself studying in a witches’ coven in a way that felt entirely different than it had in the ’77 version. But it’s not just Swinton. All the teachers at Berlin’s prestigious Markos Dance Academy feel wicked—well, at least those loyal to Markos.
1. The Faculty (1998)
Holy cow, this cast! The student body—Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Clea Duval, Jordana Brewster, Usher!—face off against a teaching staff dreams are made of. Bebe Neuwirth! Jon Stewart! Salma Hayek! Piper Laurie! Famke Janssen! Robert Patrick!
Robert Rodriguez directs a script co-penned by Kevin Williamson (Scream, etc.) that finds the conformity machine of a high school as the perfect setting for an Invasion of the Body Snatchers riff. It’s darkly comical fun from beginning to end.
Screening Rom: Borderlands, Cuckoo, It Ends with Us, Instigators & More
Vault Vamp
Borderlands
by Hope Madden
I want very much to love that Cate Blanchett keeps making Eli Roth movies. Maybe I could find that love if Roth would put her in something he knows how to make—a horror film—instead of trapping her inside a genre he can’t seem to figure out himself.
Borderlands is Roth’s big screen adaptation of a popular video game, a Mad Max style fantasy that follows low life bounty hunter Lilith (Blanchett) to a vile planet of opportunists and thieves on a quest to retrieve the kidnapped daughter of a mogul (Edgar Ramírez).
But daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, Barbie) doesn’t want to be rescued and soon, begrudgingly, Lilith becomes part of Tina’s ragtag band of misfit heroes (along with Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu and the voice of Jack Black).
That’s a good cast, top to bottom. Black and Blanchett co-led Roth’s 2018 misfire The House with a Clock in its Walls. It wasn’t a big miss. It was a fine if unremarkable adaptation of the John Bellairs novel for kids. But Blanchett and Black were fun.
This go-round, Black’s limited to pointless annoyance as he voices robot sidekick Claptrap. Blanchett is glorious, naturally, cutting an imposing video game figure with sly wit and grace. Greenblatt’s a bit of fun, Hart’s underused. But the cast is not the problem.
Roth feels out of sorts. The action is not compelling, the comic timing is way off, there’s little chemistry among his merry band, the stakes feel low, surprises are few, meaningful transitions from one set up to the next don’t exist, the FX are not great.
There are two main action set pieces (that’s not nearly enough, by the way) that could have amounted to something interesting: one with a car and a giant piss field monster and the second with an underground tunnel full of lunatics. Roth can’t generate either the exhilaration or the comedy the first calls for. The second comes closer—it’s a horror set up, truth be told, and that should be an easier fit for the filmmaker—and it’s a natural video game fit. It’s the closest he comes to excitement, but it’s belabored, its end an utter disappointment.
Like the film.
Lonely in Your Nightmare
Ganymede
by Hope Madden
Have you ever seen A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge? Because you should, especially if you find yourself intrigued by the plot synopsis for Colby Holt and Sam Probst’s LGBTQ+ horror Ganymede.
In the Nightmare sequel, everything young Jesse Walsh sees around him—his gym teacher’s S&M outfit, the neighborhood bar where men make out with other men in the stairwell, shirtless frenemy Ron Grady—all seem to be pointing him toward his own homosexuality. Meanwhile, a shadowy menace stalks his nightmares, clearly a representation of the terror and horror he associates with the sexual orientation he’s unwilling to recognize.
If that’s not how you read that film, rewatch it because it’s clearly there in every frame.
Holt and Probst are not hiding their agenda behind slasher antics to maximize audience size. High school wrestler Lee Fletcher (Jordan Doww) buries his feelings and repeats the mantra I’m neither gay nor bisexual, I’m straight and heterosexual. But he knows the truth, and his parents—the honorable Big Lee Fletcher (veteran talent Joe Chrest) and tradwife Floy (Robyn Lively)—suspect it. But they all know that the fear of God is enough to turn the boy straight.
Except, of course, that it’s not. And when Lee finds himself drawn to sweet, out-and-proud Kyle (Pablo Castelblanco, the dearest kid), a repugnant, demonic image begins to stalk him. Seriously fundamentalist preacher Pastor Royer (David Koechner, solid) comes to the rescue with his own recipe for salvation.
The filmmakers, working from Holt’s script, juggle societal pressure, family trauma and damaging fundamentalist beliefs with a genuine tenderness for adolescence. A film that sometimes bares its budget gets a boost from Koechner, and the vulnerability Castelblanco brings to his darling character keeps tensions very high.
Doww, on the other hand, struggles to find a whole human inside this smothered, denied young man. Chrest is wasted with an underwritten cliché of a role and Lively’s character arc needed more development, particularly as it relates to Paster Royer.
But there is a refreshing boldness in Ganymede. The conflict between Kyle and Lee parallels those between the ordinary high school students and Carrie White. The idea that homosexuality is somehow abnormal is now the utterly backwards and ridiculous notion and those who cling to it are hypocrites and bullies.
So, give Ganymede a chance. And then, if you like it even a little bit, give yourself the gift of Freddy’s Revenge, no matter how many times you’ve already seen it. That movie was ahead of its time.
Screening Room: Trap, Sing Sing, Kneecap, Harold and the Purple Crayon and More
Killer Concert
Trap
by Hope Madden
You have to feel for a guy who’s built his career on trick endings. If he delivers another twist, he’s nothing but a gimmick. What if he just makes a thriller, no tricks, no twist, no gimmick? It can be done, right? Other filmmakers do it.
In the case of Trap, M. Night Shyamalan trades in twists and surprises for contrivance and predictability.
Josh Hartnett is Cooper, the awesome dad who sprung for floor seats to take his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see her hero, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). But—you’ve seen the trailers—the whole concert is a trap. Cooper’s a serial killer and the Feds know he’ll be there, so they’ve descended on the show to smoke him out.
It is a compelling idea—sort of like the sting operation at the beginning of the 1989 Al Pacino/Ellen Barkin thriller Sea of Love. Except on a larger scale, with twenty thousand innocent lives at stake. I mean, cinematically it’s not a bad scheme, but in terms of law enforcement, feels sketchy.
Still, with a premise like that, the real star is the writing. How on earth is Shyamalan going to get his characters out of this?
With a lot of convenient opportunities for exposition, unreasonably handy opportunities for possible escape, and a heavy reliance on the idea that the moviegoing audience has not been to a lot of concerts.
Hartnett’s great. He’s an excellent choice for a serial killer: physically imposing but somehow bland, likeable without being memorable. Shyamalan’s camera emphasizes his height one moment, his Good Guy Jim smile the next.
Donoghue’s believable as the star struck pre-teen and Alison Pill shines late in the movie as her mother. Marnie McPhail feels unsettling real as that mom who will not drop it, and Jonathan Langdon charms as the vendor who talks to much and doesn’t have to work that hard.
Saleka Shyamalan struggles. She writes and performs all the Lady Raven songs, which seem reasonable enough as pop hits to me but, let’s be honest, I would have no idea. She comes up lacking in stage presence as the pop diva, though, and even more so as an actor.
But it’s the writing that lets you down the most. He can’t nail it every time, and when M. Night hits—The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Visit, Split—it’s worth all the misses. Trap is a miss. It’s not his worst, just middle of the pack, but a disappointment nonetheless.
