Tag Archives: Hope Madden

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Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation

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by Hope Madden

When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?

Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. Not only to we now have ShortsTV, but in the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. And in the cases where the combined run times don’t reach feature length, some bonus shorts are added to the programs.

In this year’s Animation group, don’t look for a lot of silly fun. Or any, really. These animators have beautiful heartbreak in store for you. (Did Pixar not make a movie this year? Seriously, have your Kleenex handy.)

Our Uniform 7 Mins. Director: Yegane Moghaddam Iran

The lightest of the films in the category, Our Uniform delivers a tactile journey through the weight, feel and even sound of the fabric of our lives. Told from the perspective of an Iranian school girl, the film unfolds as a nonchalant conversation about the clothing she wears and how it changes depending on her age and where she is.

The animation is a delight of fabric and flow, and the story releases a sense of freedom and what that feels like.

Letter to a Pig 17 Mins. Director: Tal Kantor Israel

This haunting story, told mostly in black and white with startling uses of pink, follows the dream a school girl has as a Holocaust survivor visits her classroom to tell of a pig that saved his live.

Tal Kantor, who writes and directs, takes unexpected turns in tone. What at first feels like a heartbreaking but beautiful story of survival meeting the apathy of middle schoolers, turns to bitterness and hatred, which turns on its head as it’s translated into the dream of a child. It’s a harrowing, somber but beautiful work.

Pachyderme 11 Mins. Director: Stéphanie Clément France

This heartbreaking tale that sneaks up on you is told in lovely, fluid watercolor style animation with a lilting, melancholy delivery as a grown woman looks back at her visits to her grandparents when she was a child.

Together director Stéphanie Clément and writer Marc Rius tease one story from another, the combined tale told with the resigned distance of age by the narrator. The result is touching and lovely.

Ninety-Five Senses 13 Mins. Director: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess USA

This is not a film I would expect from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess (working alongside his wife and directing partner, Jerusha Hess).

Tim Blake Nelson voices the protagonist of this story, an older man running through a personal tale depicting each of his senses. The delivery is cantankerous and the often quirky animation style suggests homespun wisdom. But the story the Hesses tell consistently surprises. It’s a startlingly human story of redemption, of sorts, and it pulls more tears than the others. (And that is a feat—these movies are out to destroy you!)

War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko 11 Mins. Director: Dave Mullins USA

A carrier pigeon flies through the winter sky, bombs bursting around him. A soldier clomps through snow, his boot print showing the blood beneath the snow.

A chess match unfolds that offers a birds-eye view of the idiocy of war. It’s another tear jerker, but what’s wrong with a good cry?

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Rastaman, Live Up

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Bob Marley: One Love

by Hope Madden

It’s kind of stunning that Bob Marley: One Love represents the first time someone’s told the star’s legendary tale onscreen. Yes, you can find concerts to watch (may we recommend 2020’s Marley?), as well as Kevin Macdonald’s outstanding 2012 documentary, Marley.

But this life seems custom designed for cinematic treatment.

Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Joe Bell–dude loves him a biopic) finally gives the Rastafarian some big screen drama with a fairly straightforward, greatest-hits look at what set Marley apart.

Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malxolm X in One Night in Miami) plays Marley. The 2012 doc provides a little clearer picture of Bob’s enigmatic, challenging character. Ben-Adir delivers a charming, eternally laid-back presence. Marley’s flawed, but just enough to make him human. Never enough to make him unlikeable.

As the film–written by Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, and Zach Baylin–begins, Jamaica is in the middle of a contentious election year that threatens to erupt in a civil war. Marley hopes an upcoming concert can bring the people together.

His wife Rita (Lashana Lynch, The Woman King) disagrees. She thinks it will bring danger to Bob and his family. Rita is right.

The balance of the film follows Marley’s story, sometimes flashing to dreamlike snatches from his childhood, or allowing glimpses of the teen years that brought Bob, Rita, and Rastafarianism together. The main throughline is the trouble caused by success outside of Jamaica.

Lynch flexes muscles we’ve not seen before, though the unapologetic ferocity that has marked her work up to now is as present as ever. Ben-Adir’s Marley is all tenderness, and the performances balance each other nicely.

The music is great, obviously, and a large ensemble (Nia Ashi, James Norton, Anthony Welsh, Quan-Dajai Henriques, Michael Gandolfini) delivers.

Marley’s widow, his oldest son Ziggy, and several of his other children produce. Possibly this explains One Love’s soft touch. And the result is a perfectly lovely tribute to a figure who is not known as well as he should be. But it also does not really let us get to know him, which is too bad.

New In Theaters

Forest Primeval

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Out of Darkness

by Hope Madden

Some 45,000 years ago, Adem (Chuku Modu) and his mate Ave (Iola Evans), his heir (Luna Mwezi), his brother (Kit Young), the elder (Arno Lüning), and a stray (Safia Oakley-Green) left their hunter-gatherer community and crossed the water, looking for the paradise Adem had heard tell of in the old lands.

We know this because the little group spins yarns around a campfire to stave off starvation, and wise Odal (Lüning) is entertaining. He’s also owning the narrative, a concept co-writer (working with Ruth Greenberg and Oliver Kassman) and director Andrew Cumming returns to often as he contemplates early human history with his stone age thriller, Out of Darkness.

Adem, confident of his godlike abilities and his entitlement, believes he will establish his own paradise in this land. But there is no food in sight, and pregnant Ave may die or lose another baby if he does not find food soon.

And yet, starvation may be the least of the little band’s worries. Gathered around the fire at night, they feel movement in the shadows, hear unearthly shrieking. Have they angered demons? Will they become prey?

An imposing Scottish landscape lends the film immeasurable production value, and the invented language adds authenticity. Each performance is solid. Modu, as the steely alpha, is pitiless and selfish. Lüning delivers a conniving turn, and Oakley-Green, as the underdog hero, mines a primitive spirit for complexity.

The film itself treads somewhat familiar ground–a little bit Prey, a touch Quest for Fire, maybe a little Bone Tomahawk.

The film expertly plays with audience expectations. A “brains trump brute force” evolution tale, a la One Million B.C.? A feminist reimagining of prehistory? A pioneering story, or one of invasion? Is it a man versus nature ordeal, or is it a horror movie?

Out of Darkness asks more questions than it answers. That’s not to say there are plot holes–the script is airtight. But what Cumming is out to communicate about our humble beginnings or what that has to say about humanity is a little tougher to decipher.

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Hey, Barbie

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Sometimes I Think About Dying

by Hope Madden

Sometimes I Think About Dying feels like the farthest from Star Wars an actor can go. And I like Star Wars, but still, I mean that as a good thing.

Rather than taking place in a galaxy far, far away, director Rachel Lambert’s film takes place in a set of cubicles inside an office near the ocean of a small Washington town. Daisy Ridley (who also produces) plays Fran. Fran likes spreadsheets, almost never talks, and sometimes she thinks about dying.

That is, until Robert (Dave Merheje) takes the cubicle recently vacated by Carol (Marcia DeBonis), who retired and went on a cruise. Robert’s outgoing, as all of Fran’s office mates seem to be, but there is one difference. Robert realizes Fran exists. And now suddenly, as she sits alone in her very modest apartment after eating a microwaved meal of meat patty covered in cottage cheese, Fran no longer thinks about dying. She thinks about Robert.

Lambert’s film benefits immeasurably from an incredibly lived-in, authentic environment. Though each character has its charm, each one also feels apiece of this world. Sometimes I Think About Dying doesn’t satirize the world of the cubicle as The Office or Office Space. It just understands it–recognizes the banality and camaraderie and sparks of humanity and humor.

What Lambert and Ridley mine beautifully is the difficulty people face when they’re trying desperately to be normal, and the only way they can manage is to be utterly invisible. The longing that comes to life in Fran’s face, her slow thaw to tenderness, vulnerability, brittleness, and panic testifies to Ridley’s versatility.

The full ensemble is a delight, but Merheje is particularly perfect in this role. His own insecurity and loneliness bubble to the surface as he tries and fails to figure Fran out and just have a normal relationship.

Working from a script by Stefanie Abel Horowitz (which she adapts from her acclaimed short), Kevin Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead, Lambert shies away from the morbid or fantastical that exists in the tale. It exists, but it’s accepted lightly in a film that is quiet. It sneaks up on you, like death or like love. And it shows an impressive, introspective side of Ridley.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Argylle, The Promised Land, Scrambled, Greatest Night in Pop & More

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Argylle, The Promised Land, Departing Seniors, Scrambled, The Greatest Night in Pop, Dario Argento Panico, Fitting In, Hundreds of Beavers

New In Theaters, Shudder Premiere

Yellow

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Dario Argento Panico

by Hope Madden

In 2019, documentarian Simone Scafidi turned his attention to Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci for the film Fulci for Fake. It seems only fitting, then, that he shine a spotlight on Italy’s most revered horror maestro – and a bit of an artistic adversary of Fulci’s – Dario Argento.

Panico follows Argento into seclusion in a hotel where he hopes to finish his latest screenplay. From there, Scafidi interviews the director as well as his oldest daughter, Fiore, essentially ruining the whole point of Argento’s stay at the hotel, which makes the setup seem odd from the start.

Argento knows what’s up, though, posing thoughtfully with beautiful architecture and charming Scafidi with the odd reminiscence. These moments pepper a chronological throughline of archival footage and movie segments as well as contemporary interviews with family and other filmmakers.

Few genre fans would argue Argento’s influence or importance in cinema. Gushing tributes from Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé (who cast Argento in the lead for his 2021 drama Vortex) offer delightful glimpses into just what an influence he has been.

Not every opinion is positive – one friend of Argento’s even articulates the plain truth that the maestro’s Nineties output lacked all art.

What Panico lacks are follow-up questions. A number of provocative comments from interviewees seemed like opportunities to hear from Argento on the matter, and yet at no point does Scafidi dig in. This is most confounding during a fairly lengthy interview with Argento’s younger daughter, Asia.

The star of six of her father’s films, beginning with Trauma when she was 16, Asia Argento has been the center of a great deal of speculation and debate concerning her father as a filmmaker and as a parent. And though she spins each unusual parenting or directorial choice as if it’s natural, positive, or wise, most of the time it clearly is not. In fact, an entire (and far more interesting) look at who Dario Argento is and what we should make of his movies could be carved out of just her interview, had Scafidi double checked any of it with her dad.

Nope. Instead, Dario sits across a table from Fiore. She asks him how he managed to be such an amazing dad, always doting on his two daughters. He says that’s just how a person goes about being a father.

I’m not bothered by a superficial doc that just points out why a filmmaker managed to leave such a remarkable legacy in a single genre. But if you’re going to tease us with actual information, choosing not to address any of that information makes for a very frustrating viewing experience.

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Barbarian at the Gates of Hell

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She Is Conann

by Hope Madden

What did I just watch?

It’s called She Is Conann, and it defies simple summarization.

French filmmaking provocateur Bertrand Mandico would like to take you on a strange journey. Conann, played throughout this experimental epic by six different actors (Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard and Françoise Brion) is no ordinary barbarian. But is she the most barbaric of all barbarians? At her death, her life is recounted to the Queen of Hell to make that determination.

Who is telling the tale? Rainer, a dog man (played by a woman, Elina Löwensohn) who’d been Conann’s near-constant companion since her earliest days of barbarism. They are, ahem, close.

This weird fever dream is told mostly in black and white with filth and sparkles, which makes the seemingly random pops of giallo-esque color more striking. We meet Conann at 15 in what is closest to the barbarian concept of the Schwarzenegger series that gives Mandico’s film its name. All swords and mud and conquest, the stage is set for vengeance to grip the orphan’s mind and set her on a path to rule all.

But her first real foe turns out to be herself, as she is forever murdered when visited by the version of Conann from one decade hence. This allows Mandico to leapfrog around time, creating bizarre and intoxicatingly staged eras that mix queer iconography with punk and disco, then symbols of conquest from the Roman Empire to Nazi Germany.

Rainer is always there, flashing photos as both witness and artist, one of dozens of ways the film links art with consumerism, artist with consumption. (Indeed, eventually the link is quite literal.)

Easter eggs to Naked Lunch, Blade Runner and many more, while fun, also embellish each era’s aesthetic. The result is morbid and macabre, grotesque and cynical and of course, strangely beautiful.

She Is Conann drags a bit, feeling every second of its 105-minute running time. Some eras grow more tedious than others, but a fresh and entirely bizarre surprise is around every bend. This is not a film you leave thinking, Oh, I saw that coming. The result is more of a bewildering if absolutely entertaining WTF?

Fright Club

Fright Club: Best Evening Gowns in Horror

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We are thrilled to welcome Melissa LaMartina – actress, producer, director, and alter ego to Aurora Gorealis, macabre mistress of ceremonies for Shocktail Hour! Fashion icon that she is, Melissa recommended the topic Evening Gowns in Horror Movies.

We run through the best dressed, most fashionable to murder or be murdered in horror films. Listen in, won’t you?

5. Jesse (Elle Fanning) – blue dress in The Neon Demon (2016)

Nicolas Winding Refn’s first full-blown horror movie looks glorious from frame one. Elle Fanning and her co-stars carry off dozens of amazing gowns throughout the film, but it’s that shiny blue number Refn pairs with almost giallo-red blood and those lovely gemstones that left us breathless.

4. Elizabeth Medina (Barbara Steele) – red gown in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Roger Corman may have skimped on a lot of things, but his costuming was top notch. And when doesn’t Barbara Steele pull off a look? Her character in The Pit and the Pendulum has something to hide, and the wardrobe changes with her mood. Our favorite mood is this red swashbuckling number, as it to announce that she was done pretending.

3. Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) – white gown in Crimson Peak (2015)

Guillermo del Toro’s ghost story is his most fashionable film to date. Jessica Chastain’s Lucille Sharpe is defined by the stiffly dated frocks – gorgeous though they are–while Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is a vision of the future in this buttery satin gown.

2. Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) – silver gown in Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Every garment in this film is a stunner, and each gown worn by the divine Delphine Seyrig deserves its own spot on this list. But the silver number is truly to die for. The way the candle light bounces off the sequins gives Seyrig an otherworldly look that matches her magnificent performance.

1. Juliana (Hazel Court) – the red gown in The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Another Corman classic, The Masque of the Red Death swims in decadence, something captured magnificently by the wardrobe. Everyone looks stunning, but Hazel Court commands attention in two different ensembles. And though the green gown deserves its own spot, it’s the red dress – and how she wears it – that tops our list.

Outtakes

Making His Mark

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Spencer + Penny, Forever

by Hope Madden

Welcome to the desk in the den, home to our hero, Spencer. Spencer is a mechanical pencil, and you’re invited to his life story. Life in the pen cup is not always fun, but Spencer makes the best of every situation.

Spencer + Penny, Forever, the charming short film from writer/director/star/editor/cinematographer Eric Boso, is an inventive and emotionally satisfying look at life, love, art and friendship.

A master class in visual storytelling, Spencer + Penny, Forever works like the best kind of picture book. The words are telling you one thing, but the visuals not only provide all the necessary context, but they also deliver additional essential information. And again, as is the case with the best picture books, the balance between words and  visuals is constructed in the most delightful way.

Boso builds tension that threatens outright heartbreak, but the delivery is liltingly playful. The tone itself may be the film’s greatest feat, balancing on a slim line between childlike wonder and melancholy.

Boso’s own voicework as Spencer is top notch – touched with optimism, humanity and pain. His performance is balanced with a bright, lovely turn from Samantha Martin Hospodar as the new pencil on the desk, Penny. Their performances are sweet and inviting, the tenderness promising an emotional journey that is surprisingly poignant.

Given the subject matter, Boso wisely sidesteps sentimentality or even campy humor, but the absolute lack of cynicism in his direction is refreshing and heartbreaking. Spencer + Penny, Forever is a unique and beautiful vision from a talented filmmaker.