Screening Room: I.S.S., Origin, All of Us Strangers, Founders Day, Cult Killer, Sunrise, Freud’s Last Session, Project Dorothy
Tag Archives: Hope Madden
Fire Down Below
I.S.S.
by Hope Madden
When you watch a Gabriela Cowperthwaite movie, you never fully forget her background in documentary. And while none of her narrative films possess the same vitality of her 2013 doc Blackfish, each film’s lived-in detail gives it authenticity that serves a purpose.
Her latest seals you up inside the International Space Station with three Russian cosmonauts and three American astronauts as the world below devolves into a nuclear battle between the two nations.
I.S.S. introduces new science officer Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) to a close-knit group who’s shared cramped quarters for years. First Officer of the American unit Gordon (Chris Messina) is levelheaded and caring. Weronika (Masha Mashkova) and Gordon move quickly to help Kira feel at home.
Until word comes from below. Each side has been ordered to “take I.S.S. under any circumstances.” In cramped confines and awkward conditions, a handful of people hide and seek and figure out who can and can’t be trusted.
Tight space, small group, big stakes – it seems like an excellent premise, but Cowperthwaite, from a script by Nick Shafir, doesn’t have a lot of spare parts to work with.
She makes up for much of what’s missing with camera work. She and cinematographer Nick Remy Matthews (Hotel Mumbai) employ simple but effective tricks to ramp up tension.
Matthews’s camera floats in and around the zero-gravity quarters while security footage – stable and in b/w – makes you feel as if you’re sneaking a peek at something that you’re not supposed to see. The two styles collaborate to generate dread and a sense of helplessness.
Footage of the brief adventure outside the craft is generally quite impressive – it’s no Cuarón, but it does look good.
Messina and Pilou Asbæk (as conflicted cosmonaut Alexey) deliver the most complete performances, full of regret and humanity.
DeBose is hamstrung between heroism and naivete. Her dialog is often less logical than it is convenient. Jim Gallagher Jr. telegraphs his position in the shifting drama from his first moment onscreen.
Worse still, somehow the whole film feels anticlimactic. The danger never feels real, and the pointlessness of success is never even addressed. It’s a misfire from a reliable filmmaker and a middling effort in the “terror in space” subgenre.
When You’re Alone
All of Us Strangers
by Hope Madden
Loneliness can be self-imposed, but that doesn’t make it any easier to overcome.
Adam (Andrew Scott) is alone. A writer living in a London high rise that’s still under construction, his solitary days bleed into his solitary nights, 80s hits on video and vinyl his main companions.
Adam is trying to write about his parents, so he decides to leave his flat, take a train, and revisit his old neighborhood. And soon his solitary days turn into afternoons spent with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) and nights spent with his only neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal).
What follows is a beautiful, melancholy meditation on reconciling your love for someone who has failed you, recognizing their love for you and their failure.
Scott doesn’t anchor the film as much as he haunts it with a turn that’s achingly tender and forgiving. Meanwhile, Mescal delivers another beautifully wounded performance, raw with emotion and sensuality.
Foy is a delightful change of pace, conflicted and unsure, and Bell stands out as the dad you really want him to be: honest, culpable, sorry, deeply loving.
Writer/director Andrew Haigh (45 Years) expertly weaves the lonesomeness of childhood traumas, as misunderstood and overwhelming as they can be, with personal identity. What of your traumas created who you are? What of who you are created your traumas?
Though never illogical, logic itself is far from the driving principle in Haigh’s storytelling. Emotional honesty, perhaps. Desire, certainly.
All of Us Strangers is a tough film to summarize and even tougher to categorize. It exists in a dream state bound by loss and isolation. Naturally, the only way to puncture that atmosphere is with love.
In many ways, this film should not work. Genre elements litter the script that, told by any other filmmaker, would run either maudlin or cheesy. But Haigh’s hypnotic touch creates a tone equally honest and obscure yet full of wonder. It’s also utterly devastating.
Fright Club: Unexpected Guests in Horror
It’s one of the oldest tropes in horror: an unexpected knock at the door. Maybe the visitors are in danger: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Human Centipede, The Old Dark House and countless others. Or, maybe it’s the folks inside who should be afraid: Knock, Knock; Brimstone and Treacle. For our 10th anniversary special, we count down the best “unexpected guest” horror.
5. The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
The Eyes of My Mother will remind you of many other films, and yet there truly is no film quite like this one.
First time feature writer/director Nicolas Pesce, with a hell of an assist from cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, casts an eerie spell of lonesome bucolic horror.
Shot in ideal-for-the-project black and white, an Act 1 event could come from any number of horror films. A mother looks out her window to see her young daughter, playing alone in the front lawn, talking with a stranger. There is something clearly wrong with the stranger, and things take a bad turn. But for Pesce, this simple, well-worn set-up offers endless unexplored possibilities. Because this bad man doesn’t realize that the isolated farm family he’s come to harm is very comfortable with dissection.
4. The Strangers (2008)
“Is Tamara home?”
Writer/director Bryan Bertino creates an awful lot of terror beginning with that line.
A couple heads to an isolated summer home after a wedding. It was meant to be the first stop on their life together, or so we gather, but not all worked out as James (Scott Speedman) had planned. As he and what he’d hoped would be his fiancé, Kristen (Liv Tyler), sit awkwardly and dance around the issue, their very late night is interrupted by a knock and that immediately suspicious question.
Bertino beautifully crafts his first act to ratchet up suspense, with lovely wide shots that allow so much to happen quietly in a frame. This is a home invasion film with an almost unbearable slow burn.
3. Funny Games (1997, 2007)
A family pulls into their vacation lake home, and are quickly bothered by two young men in white gloves. Things, to put it mildly, deteriorate.
Writer/director Michael Haneke begins this nerve wracking exercise by treading tensions created through etiquette, toying with subtle social mores and yet building dread so deftly, so authentically, that you begin to clench your teeth long before the first act of true violence.
But it is the villains who sell the premise. Whether German actors Arno Frisch and Frank Giering or Americans Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt for his 2007 English language remake, the bored sadism that wafts from these kids is seriously unsettling, as, in turn, is the film.
2. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.
Two young, ordinary, healthy kids left Denton that fateful evening on a night out. It was a night out they were going to remember for a very long time.
Brad Majors (asshole) and Janet Weiss (slut) get themselves in a bit of a pickle on a rainy night and need to seek a telephone at that castle they past a few miles back. I think you know the rest.
1. The Black Cat (1934)
Rocky Horror owes a tremendous debt to Edgar G. Ulmer’s bizarre horror show. The film – clearly precode – boasts torture, tales of cannibalism, and more than the hint of necromancy.
Plus Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff?! What is not to love?
Loosely based on Poe’s The Black Cat – so loose in fact that it bears not a single moment’s resemblance to the short – the film introduces Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast. He’s come to seek vengeance on Karloff’s mysterious Hjalmar Poelzig, if only Werdegast can overcome his all-consuming terror of cats!
Screening Room: Mean Girls, American Fiction, Beekeeper, Book of Clarence and More
Stranger Than
American Fiction
by Hope Madden
Boyz in the Hood is a great movie. In 1991, the same year 23-year-old John Singleton’s feature debut made box office and Oscar history, Julie Dash released the beautiful, generational drama, Daughters of the Dust. No guns, no cops, no real violence to speak of, Dash’s film nabbed a Sundance grand jury prize nomination and cinematography award.
Daughters of the Dust was essentially forgotten upon its release. (It has, thank God, in recent years been rediscovered, restored, and added to the National Film Preservation Registry.) But Boyz in the Hood immediately reshaped movies.
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction takes aim at fiction – print or cinematic – and its problematic relationship with Black trauma. But to say that Cord’s film would like to see movies move beyond Boyz in the Hood and other films that revel in suffering would be to simplify, even miss its point. The filmmaker complicates the discussion with debate over a Black creator’s right to simply pursue success, as any other creator might. Even if that means catering to a white audience’s thirst for Black trauma.
“White people think that they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.”
You might not expect a film that floats this truth so effortlessly to be a laugh riot, but American Fiction delivers an awful lot of laugh-out-loud moments.
Jeffrey Wright plays cantankerous college professor and literary writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. His latest manuscript is not being picked up for publication, his students hate him, and suddenly he needs to look after his mother, who will need round-the-clock care. Which costs money. The kind of money you can make if you pander to exactly the readership he loathes.
Monk does, incognito, and soon he’s pretending to be something he’s not at work and pretending not to be something he is at home. Buried within this are a couple of really lovely, sweetly complex middle-aged romances. Those are rare in films, so they deserve a mention here.
Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown offer remarkable supporting turns as characters you want to dislike but simply cannot – part and parcel of a film that forever asks you to rethink what you believe you know. And maybe laugh bitterly as you do.
Adam Brody is also a hoot as that same smarmy douche he always plays, but he does it so very well. Jon Ortiz and Erika Alexander both bring warmth and humanity to a story essentially about a man who is not quite sure how to be warm and human.
Wright – an underappreciated genius of an actor if ever there was one – does what he always does. He conjures a fully formed human being, flawed but forgivable and endlessly earnest. Buoyed by a delightful ensemble and cuttingly hilarious script, he delivers one of the finest performances of his career.
Don’t Look Back
Memory
by Hope Madden
“I remember…”
These are the first words uttered in Michel Franco’s deceptively spare drama, Memory. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is celebrating 13 years of sobriety at an AA meeting. She’s brought her daughter, and those around her are remembering her impact on them.
For the next 140 minutes, Franco examines what’s true and what’s faulty in the human memory, and what he finds is sometimes harsh and unpleasant, but just often, profoundly tender.
Chastain’s performance is brittle but with complexity and depth. Sylvia’s life, and her hard-edged wall, are built from the years of being denied her truth. She knows who she is and she’s doing what she can with that.
Saul (Peter Sarsgaard, astonishing) does not always know who he is, but when he does the film shimmers with life and humanity. Saul follows Sylvia home from a high school reunion of sorts. The catalyst is provocative in that it makes Sylvie reconsider her own memory, which allows those around her to reignite their assault on its veracity.
A razor-sharp ensemble lends remarkable support to Chastain and Sarsgaard. Jessica Harper, in particular, is picture perfect, her sly and cheery manipulation leading to an emotional climax blistered by authenticity.
Memory is a bit of a departure for Franco, who’s films often keep audiences at arm’s length from the emotional turmoil beneath a character’s enigmatic surface. Not so here. Chastain’s slowly melting wall of ice creates real intimacy, and what she reveals beneath is raw.
She and Sarsgaard are veteran talents reveling in an opportunity to discard artifice and create something untidy. Their work, particularly in scenes together, testifies again to each actor’s remarkable skill.
Franco’s films rarely answer all the questions they ask, and can feel almost shapeless and often hopeless. Memory is a departure here as well. Though it’s far less rigidly structured than many Hollywood films, there’s a comforting structure to it and, more comforting, an undeniable spark of hope.
Would You Be Mine? Could You Be Mine?
Destroy All Neighbors
by Hope Madden
A film for anyone who squeezes creative passions into the hours outside other responsibilities, refuses the label “hobby” and still never manages to complete anything, Destroy All Neighbors lives that nightmare.
William (Jonah Ray) has been working and reworking the final song on his prog-rock album for ages. Years. He’s so close, but then the loudest, most aggressively weird neighbor moves in next door. Vlad (Alex Winter, who also produces) may have charmed William’s longsuffering girlfriend (Kiran Deol), but he’s pushing William to the brink of insanity. Who can get anything done with all that noise?!
William is that nonconfrontational nice guy who’s always being taken advantage of. But Vlad has pushed him too far. Which is why it will be so difficult to convince anyone that Vlad accidentally killed and dismembered his own self. But he did! Really!
Destroy All Neighbors delivers silly, sloppy horror comedy with the highly relevant message: maybe this is all your own fault. Ray (MST3K) drives the lunacy with an earnest performance. You kind of already know this guy. Hell, he could be you.
And that’s the real charm of Destroy All Neighbors. Director Josh Forbes, working from a script by Mike Benner, Jared Logan and Charles A. Pieper, isn’t wagging a finger of judgment. The finger is gently pointed inward.
The writing team comes from animation and comedy rather than horror, which may be why the film is so gleefully gory, no meanness in it. Whenever William does find his inner badass, the film makes sure he immediately regrets it.
A cameo from Kumail Nanjiani and the supporting goofiness from Lennon and Ryan Kattner as rock and roll has been Caleb Bang Jansen (say the whole name!) keep the tone silly.
Destroy All Neighbors is not a great movie. It’s definitely not a great horror movie. But it’s a light, weird, gentle reminder that you may be all that’s holding you back. (And also, loud neighbors kind of suck.)
Screening Room: Night Swim, Society of the Snow, Memory, Good Grief, The Bricklayer
2023 COFCA Nominations
Nominees for the 22nd annual Columbus Film Critics Association awards
(Columbus, December 31, 2023) The Columbus Film Critics Association is pleased to announce the nominees for its 22nd annual awards. Winners will be announced on the evening of January 4th, 2024.
Founded in 2002, the Columbus Film Critics Association is comprised of film critics based in Columbus, Ohio and its surrounding areas. Its membership consists of 28 print, radio, television, and online critics. COFCA’s official website at www.cofca.org contains links to member reviews and past award winners.
The 2023 Columbus Film Critics Association awards nominees are:
Best Film
–American Fiction
–Barbie
–Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
–The Holdovers
–The Iron Claw
–Killers of the Flower Moon
–May December
–Oppenheimer
–Past Lives
–Poor Things
–Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
–The Zone of Interest
Best Director
-Greta Gerwig, Barbie
-Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
-Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
-Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Celine Song, Past Lives
Best Lead Performance
-Bradley Cooper, Maestro
-Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Colman Domingo, Rustin
-Zac Efron, The Iron Claw
-Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
-Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Greta Lee, Past Lives
-Carey Mulligan, Maestro
-Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
-Margot Robbie, Barbie
-Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
-Emma Stone, Poor Things
-Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Best Supporting Performance
-Penélope Cruz, Ferrari
-Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer
-Jodie Foster, Nyad
-Ryan Gosling, Barbie
-Glenn Howerton, Blackberry
-Charles Melton, May December
-Julianne Moore, May December
-Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
-Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
-Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Best Ensemble
–Asteroid City
–Barbie
–The Color Purple
–Killers of the Flower Moon
–Oppenheimer
–Poor Things
Actor of the Year (for an exemplary body of work)
-Willem Dafoe, Asteroid City, The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka), Inside, and Poor Things
-Matt Damon, Air and Oppenheimer
-Colman Domingo, The Color Purple, Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, Rustin, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
-Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute) and The Zone of Interest
-Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction, Asteroid City, and Rustin
Breakthrough Film Artist
-Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon – (for acting)
-Cord Jefferson, American Fiction – (for directing and screenwriting)
-Charles Melton, May December – (for acting)
-Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers – (for acting)
-Celine Song, Past Lives – (for directing and screenwriting)
Best Cinematography
-Matthew Libatique, Maestro
-Rodrigo Prieto, Barbie
-Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Robbie Ryan, Poor Things
-Hoyte Van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
Best Film Editing
-Michael Andrews, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
-Kirk Baxter, The Killer
-Nick Houy, Barbie
-Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer
-Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Poor Things
-Thelma Schoonmaker, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Adapted Screenplay
-Kelly Fremon Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
-Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
-Tony McNamara, Poor Things
-Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
-Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Original Screenplay
-Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Asteroid City
-Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, May December
-Sean Durkin, The Iron Claw
-Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
-David Hemingson, The Holdovers
-Celine Song, Past Lives
-Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)
Best Score
-Jerskin Fendrix, Poor Things
-Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer
-Laura Karpman, American Fiction
-Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Naoki Satô, Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
Best Documentary
–20 Days in Mariupol
–32 Sounds
–American Symphony
–Anselm (Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit)
–Kokomo City
–Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Best Foreign Language Film
–Afire (Roter Himmel)
–Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)
–The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)
–Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
–Perfect Days
–The Zone of Interest
Best Animated Film
–The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)
–Elemental
–Nimona
–Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
–Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Frank Gabrenya Award for Best Comedy
–American Fiction
–Asteroid City
–Barbie
–Bottoms
–The Holdovers
–No Hard Feelings
–You Hurt My Feelings
Best Overlooked Film
–Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
–Blackberry
–Rye Lane
–Showing Up
–Theater Camp
–You Hurt My Feelings
COFCA offers its congratulations to the nominees.
Previous Best Film winners:
2002: Punch-Drunk Love
2003: Lost in Translation
2004: Million Dollar Baby
2005: A History of Violence
2006: Children of Men
2007: No Country for Old Men
2008: WALL·E
2009: Up in the Air
2010: Inception
2011: Drive
2012: Moonrise Kingdom
2013: Gravity
2014: Selma
2015: Spotlight
2016: La La Land
2017: Lady Bird
2018: If Beale Street Could Talk
2019: Parasite (Gisaengchung)
2020: Promising Young Woman
2021: The Power of the Dog
2022: The Banshees of Inisherin
For more information about the Columbus Film Critics Association, please visit www.cofca.org or e-mail info@cofca.org.
The complete list of members and their affiliations:
Richard Ades (Columbus Free Press); Dwayne Bailey (Bailey’s Buzz); Adam Barney (The Film Coterie); Sam Brady (I Am Sam Reviews); Logan Burd (Cinema or Cine-meh?); Kevin Carr (www.FatGuysattheMovies.com, Westwood One); Michael Cavender (cinedump.com, pophorror.com); Bill Clark (www.fromthebalcony.com); Olie Coen (Archer Avenue, DVD Talk); John DeSando (90.5 WCBE); Johnny DiLoretto (90.5 WCBE, PencilStorm.com); Chris Feil (FilmMixTape.com, TheFilmExperience.net); Mark Jackson (MovieManJackson.com, ThatMomentIn.com); Brad Keefe (freelance); Kristin Dreyer Kramer (NightsAndWeekends.com, 90.5 WCBE); Adam Kuhn (Corndog Chats); Roger Legg (The Film Coterie, Faith and Film); Hope Madden (Columbus Underground, WTTE-TV, MaddWolf.com); Paul Markoff (Filmbound); Denny O’Leary (Columbus Free Press); Lori Pearson (Kids-in-Mind.com, critics.com); Mark Pfeiffer (Filmbound, Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema); Melissa Starker (Freelance); Brandon Thomas (MaddWolf.com); Rachel Willis (MaddWolf.com); George Wolf (Columbus Underground, WTTE-TV, MaddWolf.com); Jason Zingale (Bullz-Eye.com); Nathan Zoebl (NathanZoebl.com, Psycho Drive-In).
