Tag Archives: Hope Madden

New In Theaters

Fire in the Sky

Leave a comment

My Father’s Dragon

by Hope Madden

Like most animation fans, I eagerly await each new Cartoon Saloon adventure. Their output is simply stunning: Wolfwalkers, The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea, The Secret of the Kells. Even Pixar doesn’t have a stronger batting average.

Nora Twomey directed two of those beauties, The Breadwinner and The Secret of the Kells (which she co-helmed with Tomm Moore). She returns to the screen with the lovely romp about a dragon with a problem and a boy who solves problems, My Father’s Dragon.

Animator Masami Hata first adapted Ruth Stiles Gannett’s beloved 1948 novel for the screen in 1997. Twomey’s update takes advantage of intricate, hand-drawn animation and an impressive voice cast to bring Elmer Elevator’s imaginative journey to life.

Elmer and his mom have left behind their small town and the little store they ran. They’re living on the leaking top floor of an apartment building in a crowded city. Neither is happy about it, even if both pretend well. Then a talking cat points Elmer toward a chance to fix everything. He just needs to save this one dragon.

Charming and endlessly good-natured, My Father’s Dragon succeeds despite its comparatively predictable nature. Go into any of the other Cartoon Saloon films and you’ll find yourself surprised with each narrative turn. My Father’s Dragon, on the other hand, feels more familiar.

If the studio’s defining uniqueness is missing from its latest ‘toon, its heart is not. Voiced by Jacob Tremblay, Elmer’s the kind of kid who’s wound too tight. He tries so hard, he breaks your heart, even when his anxiety shortens his temper. Elmer’s own personality mirrors his mother’s when the chips are down, which feels of bittersweet authenticity thanks in part to Golshifteh Farahani’s tender vocal performance as Mom.

As Boris the dragon, Gaten Matarazzo is silly and sweet with moments of raw emotion. Whoopi Goldberg, Judy Greer, Mary Kay Place, Rita Moreno, Chris O’Dowd, Alan Cumming, Diane Wiest and Ian McShane round out a uniformly excellent vocal ensemble, O’Dowd is especially impressing as McShane’s harsh second-in-command, Kwan.

My Father’s Dragon represents a new direction for the animation studio. While it’s not the unassailable success of their previous films, it’s a joyous, beautiful film.

New In Theaters

Altered Images

Leave a comment

Aftersun

by Hope Madden

When you were 11, what did you think you would be doing now?

For a lot of parents encountering this query from their own 11-year-old, a joke might ward off any painful introspection. For Aftersun’s Calum (a riveting and tender Paul Mescal), the long silence seems to echo with more than just unreached potential.

Calum and his preteen daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio, remarkable) spend a holiday together in Turkey sometime in the mid-1990s, judging from the tech, which includes Sophie’s digital8 camcorder.

While the blurry, fragmented, buzzing presence of camcorder images is a long-tired filmmaking crutch, writer/director Charlotte Wells gives it deeper purpose. The fractured, off-center but intimate footage mirrors Sophie’s fuzzy memory. The gaps in reality, and the distance between what something looks like and what’s really going express adult Sophie’s (Celia Rowlson-Hall) struggle as she looks back on the fraught relationship between her younger self and her distant father.

The film moves at a languid pace, but Wells repays your patience with a rich and melancholy experience. Like Sophia Coppola with her similar Somewhere, Wells and cinematographer Gregory Oke capture palpable longing, nostalgia and heartbreak.

Neither film structures a tidy narrative, instead trusting viewers to pay attention and piece together fragments to form a whole image. Wells also benefits from two bruised but buoyant central performances that help you see what’s not being told and feel what characters are trying to keep hidden.

Mescal’s charming, innocent, awkward father is as much the memory of a lost daughter as he is a flesh and blood man. His performance aches with authenticity, and Mescal’s chemistry with young Corio only furthers that poignant realism.

Though the loose narrative may frustrate some, as a work of remembrance, Wells’ first feature film delivers something powerful and powerfully impressive.

New In Theaters

Into the Void

Leave a comment

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

The shocking news of Chadwick Boseman’s death brought plenty of feelings. One of them was curiosity about the future. How would the Black Panther franchise – newly launched via Marvel’s most impressive feature – move forward?

Wakanda Forever does it with respect, love and reverence, in a worthy second effort that’s anchored by loss, grief and perseverance.

One year after King T’Challa’s death, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) is wondering if the idea of a “Black Panther” is outdated and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is facing increased pressure to share vibranium with other world powers.

The world powers, of course, aren’t just asking. And their efforts to take are aided by a new device that can detect vibranium in the environment, which brings the powerful “Feathered Serpent God” Namor (Tenoch Huerta from The Forever Purge and Sin Nombre) out of hiding.

Vibranium is also the resource vital to his undersea world of Talukan. Namor views the detection device as a threat to his nation and demands that Ramonda and Shuri turn over the scientist responsible. If they do not, Wakanda will have a formidable new enemy.

Hannah Beachler’s production design rivals that of her Oscar-winning work in Ryan Coogler’s 2018 original. Wakanda itself is as stunning and fully realized as ever, while Namor’s undersea realm becomes a lush waterworld that puts Aquaman to shame.

But after the defiant, often furious adventure of Black Panther, the most striking aspect of Wakanda Forever is the way it embraces the void left by the loss of both T’Challa and Boseman.

Coogler, writing again with Joe Robert Cole, delivers a more contemplative film this time around. Characters wrestle with loss and power, tradition and progress, rage and mercy. The depth of the script allows Basset and Lupita Nyong’o to really shine, while Winston Duke steals many scenes with a meatier, more layered take on M’Baku.

There is room for action aplenty, equally impressive whether massive seafaring attacks or intimate one-on-one battles (much thanks to the forever badass Danai Gurira).

The introduction of young M.I.T. phenom Riri (Dominique Thorne) is a well-intentioned mirror to Shuri’s technical genius, but the thread ultimately lands as a bit light and superfluous next to the complexities being pondered here. Still, Coogler’s skill with both emotion and spectacle never allows the two-and-a-half hour plus running time to feel bloated, and the film soars highest when the rush to war plays out against a backdrop of immense, intimate grief.

Have the tissues handy for the mid-credits coda. It’s a touching toast to an absent friend, and it cements Wakanda Forever‘s beautiful commitment to looking forward with cherished memories intact.

New In Theaters, Shudder Premiere

Digging in the Dirt

1 Comment

Mandrake

by Hope Madden

I have about six different cousins named Cathy Madden, but Lynne Davison’s Mandrake is not about any of them. I hope.

Davison’s tale follows probation officer Cathy Madden (Dierdre Mullins), whose recently assigned client, Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty), has the county in a tizzy. Old “Bloody” Mary is thought to be a witch, you see, and no one’s too keen on her being let out after what she did to her husband in those woods. Twenty years wasn’t long enough.

It’s tough to do something surprising within the witch genre. These films generally fall into two categories: she’s evil and in league with Satan, or she’s misunderstood and being wronged by hateful townfolk. Davison blurs that line. Her handling of Matt Harvey’s script treads a provocative path of moral ambiguity that requires constant guesswork and generates real dread.

Connor Rotherham’s cinematography draws out the best in Vanessa O’Connor’s production design to give Bloody Mary’s environment a primal, organic and dizzying feel. Everything is draped in moss and knotted with roots. You can almost smell the rotting leaves. It’s gorgeous and dense, simultaneously lovely and terrifying.

Crotty, all wild hair and knowing eyes, blends effortlessly into this primordial world. Mullins perfectly complements that performance with her own complex take on Madden. Straightforward with no time for nonsense, the parole officer still weakens, and Mullins finds depth here. The two performers play on their opposing look and vibe not to illustrate differences but to unveil sympathies.

Mandrake never falls back on one-dimensionality. Characters are messy. They do the wrong thing, then the right thing, behave monstrously and also with kindness. The film is also mercifully light on religion, instead pitting the scientific world against something older. Whether that world and its options are more sinister is in the eye of the beholder.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time, Enola Holmes 2 and More

Leave a comment
The Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time, Enola Holmes 2, Something in the Dirt, The Estate, Next Exit, Communion, On the Line, Girl at the Window, Soft & Quiet, One Piece Film: Red, The Sleep Experiment

New In Theaters

Mourning In America

Leave a comment

Armageddon Time

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

One of the reasons Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film Lady Bird was such a refreshing treasure was the forgiveness that followed every stupid decision made by every single character. Gerwig’s film embraces the necessity of terrible choices in adolescence and it never caves to the easy desire to blame others for teenage misery.

But Gerwig didn’t grow up a Jew in Queens in 1980, which is why James Gray’s Armageddon Time tells quite a different story. To his credit, Gray still reaches toward forgiveness. And both films are mercifully unsentimental.

Young Banks Repeta is terrific as Paul Graff, Gray’s very cute, bratty, privileged stand-in. Like every 12-year-old, Paul is oblivious to his privilege. He may even enjoy becoming the class outcast since the other student spurned by Mr. Turtletaub is fast becoming Paul’s best friend.

But Johnny’s fate and Paul’s will never really gel because Paul is being trained with love to disappear when trouble arises, which means that all eyes fall on Johnny (Jaylin Webb).

Paul’s relationship with his parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, both excellent) can be funny, sassy, and heartbreaking, while his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) can always be counted on for encouragement, well-earned advice, and a present.

The stellar ensemble infuses the film with warmth, humor and sadness. And aside from a line or two that’s a shade too obvious, there’s a feeling of authenticity here that Gray is able to nurture beyond personal memoir to a grander comment on race and class. The filmmaker may be copping to his own bargains with guilt and privilege, but he’s also highlighting the daily turns of the American wheel that push so many of us toward our dreams, and so many others further away from theirs.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easily, nor should it. Gray tosses aside the rose-colored glasses that usually tint a director’s look back. Armageddon Time doesn’t deliver any easy answers, just more opportunities to question. That’s why it works.

New In Theaters, Shudder Premiere

Slum Lord

Leave a comment

Satan’s Slaves: Communion

by Hope Madden

In what may be Joko Anwar’s most assured and consistently spooky effort, Satan’s Slaves: Communion evokes effective, building horror.

Building, like a towering apartment building. It’s not an image you expect to find in horror, but it has been used to fantastic effect a number of times. Obviously, Rosemary’s Baby and The Sentinel delivered urban terror via creepy architecture. More recently, Rec and the action classic The Raid took advantage of layer upon layer of floors and doors for bloody mayhem.

Anwar blends the supernatural of the earlier films and the pandemonium of the latter with the looming presence of the structure itself, a bit like what you’ll find in Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents and Ciaran Foy’s 2012 horror, Citadel.

The mish-mash works wonders to conjure a dark, dreary, dangerous trap with supernatural evil waiting down every hall. And don’t even look in the laundry chute.

A sequel to his 2017 Satan’s Slaves (itself a riff on Norman J. Warren’s ’76 cult horror Satan’s Slave), Communion picks up in 1985, just a few years since Rini (Anwar favorite Tara Basro) and her brothers Toni (Endy Arfian) and Bondi (Nasar Annuz) lost their mother and little brother to something very sinister. Their dad moved them to this building in Jakarta, and as long as they can survive the big storm that’s coming, Rini will finally leave the nest and pursue her education.

Sure. Just don’t take the elevator.

The first Indonesian film to be shot in IMAX, Satan’s Slaves: Communion looks as grimy and shadowy as any Anwar film – as it should. He uses shadows and distance, cramped spaces and lighting to set a stage that unnerves. Both sound design and practical FX complete that picture. Yes, the ideas and even some images are pulled from other films, but the final concoction is utterly Anwar.

Uncategorized

Finding Pieces

2 Comments

Missing (Sagasu)

by Hope Madden

Shinzô Katayama learned from the best, filling the role of Second Unit Director on Bong Joon Ho’s startling Mother. He applies much of that film’s family drama/murder mystery theme for his own thriller, Missing.

Kaede (Aoi Itô) is a little fed up looking after her father, Harada (Jirô Satô). His depression and debt have only worsened since her mother’s suicide. She’s tired of being the grown-up. So tired of it that she dismisses his plot to track down the serial killer “No Name” for the reward money. When he disappears, she wishes she’d taken him more seriously.

Missing plays in parts, and Part 1 takes on the frustration and fear of Kaede’s story. Itô convinces as the child maneuvering in an adult world, complete with the frustrations, condescension and outbursts that involves. The performance never leans toward sentiment, never asks for our sympathy, and is the more fascinating for it.

Veteran Satô has no trouble finding an empathetic approach to a character in over his head. Satô complicates this questionable but lovable father figure. Harada is never an outright simpleton, always a loving family man. But he’s very, very flawed.

We get Harada’s side of the story, too, but between the two we see a bit from the perspective of No Name (Hiroya Shimizu). After establishing a layered, tense drama, Katayama, who co-writes with Kazuhisa Kotera and Ryô Takada, pulls the tale back toward horror.

Shimizu’s oily performance glides from apathy to curiosity to insincerity to sadism with unsettling ease. You root for the separated daughter and father, clearly out of their depth, but Katayama’s vision is more complicated than that.

Katayama allows moral ambiguity to enrich the film, knocking you off balance and unsure of your alliances. Three strong performances keep you intrigued and guessing, but the filmmaker surrounds them with an assortment of oddities. No character in the film is truly flat, everyone is a surprise.

Buried in this heady mystery is a thread about justice in the face of self-interest and the surprising joy of ping pong. It’s an engrossing feature debut from a director who knows how to play you.

New In Theaters

Silently Screaming

Leave a comment

The Banshees of Inisherin

by Hope Madden

Everything was fine yesterday.

Droll, dry and on point, that is the perfect tagline for Martin McDonagh’s latest bittersweet tragicomedy, The Banshees of Inisherin.

Existential dread picks up a brogue and a fiddle full of longing at JJ Devine’s Public House on an island off the West coast of Ireland in 1923. Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) has finished up with his sheep, horses, and beloved miniature donkey, Jenny. He heads today as every day to round up his best friend Colm Sunday Larry Doherty (Brendan Gleeson, perfect as always) for a pint.

But Colm ignores him. He just sits there, like.

Have they been rowing?

Pádraic doesn’t think they’ve been rowing.

It turns out that Colm has simply decided he doesn’t want to be Patraic’s friend anymore. The ripple effects of this decision are often hilarious, but just as often tragic and even awful. As Pádraic goes about trying to understand, reconnect, and change Colm’s mind we get to know the rest of the folk on the island as the Irish Civil War continues to rage.

It’s a microcosm, simultaneously intimate and universal. More than that, it’s a breathing example of the mournful humor and heritage of the Irish.

Barry Keoghan, honestly one of the most impressive actors working today, plays a little bent as the island’s main fool, Dominic Kearney. I don’t think there’s a performance in the film that won’t break your heart in one degree or another, Keoghan’s among them.

Kerry Condon’s Siobhan, Pádraic’s clear-eyed sister, is the fiery soul of McDonagh’s tale. As you might expect with a cast like this, it’s the chemistry among characters – the lived-in, weary familiarity bred by proximity– that lets McDonagh’s witty screenplay breathe. Gleeson’s soulful artist, Condon’s sharp realist, Keoghan’s lost soul, and especially Farrell’s nice fella orbit each other in a world quickly and irreversibly undone.

Carter Burwell’s camera and Ben Davis’s score remind you that the film is rooted in Irish mourning and melancholy, but McDonagh’s script still crackles with humor and pathos. And it contains maybe the best scene in a confessional ever.

Moments call to mind John Michael McDonaugh’s 2014 treasure Calvary, another Irish heartbreaker starring Gleeson. But McDonagh’s humor and insider’s perspective create something charmingly, achingly relatable.

The Banshees of Inisherin mines a kind of pain uncommon on a big screen. In Martin McDonaugh fashion, the mining is done with wit, insight, humanity and absolutely world-class acting. It must not be missed.

New In Theaters

Running On Empty

Leave a comment

Next Exit

by Hope Madden

Suicidal ideation takes a road trip in writer/director Mali Elfman’s feature debut, Next Exit.

Rose (Katie Parker) doesn’t like you. She does not want you to like her. She just wants to get to San Francisco. What’s in San Francisco? Dr. Stevenson’s experiment, which has proven the existence of an afterlife and is recruiting additional participants in the study.

A mix-up over car rental puts Rose in the same vehicle as another of Dr. Stevenson’s voyagers, Teddy (Rahul Kohli). Teddy likes everybody. Even Rose.

They have four days to drive from NYC to San Fran to end their lives. Rose just wants to get there. Teddy can’t see any reason they shouldn’t enjoy the journey.

As a character study, Next Exit soars. Parker and Kohli – both veterans of Mike Flanagan’s various genre pieces – create complicated, believable, fascinating characters. Their chemistry is terrific, and you care what happens to them. Their dynamic makes the road trip aspect of the film come alive. The cross-country antics that in other films can feel like strung-together gags seem more organic because Elfman’s investment is inside the car, not what happens outside of it.

The filmmaker is less successful with other aspects of the movie. What happens to society once it takes no leap of faith to believe in an afterlife? This is touched on but handled perhaps too subtly. The supernatural element hinted at in the opening segment remains vague to the bitter end and casting Karen Gillan in essentially a cameo role as the scientist only draws attention to this limitation. The existential dread isn’t even particularly well-developed.

But the core performances are not to be denied. Both actors fully commit to peculiar characters, each fully drawn turn allowing the other to uncover more backstory and humanity. The farther into the film you get, the more you appreciate what Kohli and Parker accomplish.