Tag Archives: Lewis Pullman

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Horny Danger

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Riff Raff

by George Wolf

What’s that you say? The Monkey‘s brand of humor wasn’t dark enough for ya?

Well Merry F-ing Christmas. Riff Raff lives where it’s none more black, crafting just enough murderous, deadpan funny business to make it worthwhile.

The trouble all starts when Rocco (Lewis Pullman) and his pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) run into Johnny (Michael Angelo Covino). The three share a romantic and friendly past, but when Johnny turns violent Rocco retaliates, which means he and Marina quickly find themselves on the run from Johnny’s gangster father, Lefty (Bill Murray).

The two head to Maine, and check in with Rocco’s father Vincent (Ed Harris), his wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and their teenage son D.J. (Miles J. Harvey). Oh, yeah, Rocco’s mother/Vincent’s ex Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge) is there, too, and danger sure makes her horny!

Hubba hubba, then, because danger’s on the way. Lefty and his henchman Lonnie (Pete Davidson) are coming to settle plenty of scores with Rocco’s extended brood.

There’s already much to keep track of, even before director Dito Montiel and writer John Pollono add in various time jumps and voiceover narration from young D.J. At times it feels like they’re both pushing too hard for nutty originality, desperate to put distance between this and other films you’ll be reminded of – especially Bad Times at the El Royale (also with Pullman).

What the film does have in its corner is a winning cast of vets who are all in on this dark ride. Of course, Murray and Coolidge are both a hoot, but Pullman and Postacchini seem believably desperate, Harris and Union hide their character secrets well, and Davidson brings a comically sympathetic layer to the doting and lethal Lonnie.

And when P.J. Byrne and Brooke Dillman pop in as an oversharing couple of suburbanites who are too clueless to be scared, their few minutes of exaggerated laughs are a welcome yin to the yang in the rest of the film.

It’s dry, bloody and violent, and is sure to be polarizing. If that’s an approach that speaks to you, Riff Raff can be downright hilarious. But chances are you may find this family crime caper as curious as it is funny.

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No-tell Motel

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Bad Times at the El Royale

by George Wolf

A priest and a vacuum salesman walk into a bar…

Well, one may not be a priest, the other might not be a salesman and the bar is really part of a nearly abandoned motel, but the point is all hell breaks loose in writer/director Drew Goddard’s stylish thriller, Bad Times at the El Royale.

Lake’s Tahoe’s El Royale sits straddling the Nevada/California border in the late 1960s. Before the East side lost its gambling license, the El Royale had been a hot spot and Rat Pack hangout, but lately bellboy/desk clerk and bartender Miles (Lewis Pullman) is pretty lonely.

Then the priest (Jeff Bridges), the salesman (Jon Hamm) and a singer (Cynthia Erivo) check in, followed by a hippie (Dakota Johnson) who’s got an F-you attitude and someone in her trunk (Cailee Spaeney). Their respective reasons for stopping at the El Royale are separate and shady, but as the characters reveal dark pasts and true intentions, the quiet hotel quickly becomes a battleground for survival.

Goddard’s follow-up to 2012’s ingenious The Cabin in the Woods is anchored with the same inventive zest, and built with time-jumping back stories and placards that bring Tarentino to mind. And while El Royale can’t completely deliver on its promise, it offers a gorgeous blast of color, sound and plot twists that are pretty fun to watch unravel.

The entire ensemble is splendid, each digging into their characters with a relish that only elevates the impact when our feelings about them change, and change again. Who’s a villain? Who’s a patsy? Who’s being framed and who’s just looking for redemption? Though Goddard’s pace gets bogged down at times, his visual style and careful placement of 60s pop hits make sure chasing those answers is always a retro hoot.

The film’s biggest disappointment stems from the arrival of the sinister Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth), a violent charmer who’s come to settle a score with someone in the El Royale’s guestbook. As past histories and current events collide, the film reveals a late-stage moralistic vein as hopes for a type of Cabin in the Woods-style showstopping finale slowly fade away.

Those final fifteen minutes are fine for any typical noir crime thriller, but not quite worthy of El Royale‘s previous deliciously indulgent two hours.





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Tamara’s Not Home. Leave a Message.

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The Strangers: Prey at Night

by Hope Madden

Sequels are hard. Especially when you don’t understand what made the original so unnerving and memorable.

A decade ago, Bryan Bertino released the almost unbearably slow burn of a home invasion film, The Strangers. The underappreciated gem quietly terrified attentive audiences, beginning with the line, “Is Tamara home?”

Director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) and screenwriter Ben Ketai (The Forest) pick up the story of three masked, bloodthirsty youngsters still looking for Tamara.

A loving but bickering family spends the night at a lakeside campground and trailer park. A great deal of exposition ensures that you catch on, but the main gist is this: problem child Kinsey (Bailee Madison) is at odds with her beleaguered parents (Christina Hendricks and Martin Henderson) and her golden-child brother (Lewis Pullman).

Yes, our three masked malcontents have also settled into that same lakeside trailer park, now mainly vacant in the post-season.

Where Bertino’s horror had the languid melancholy of the old country blues tunes scratching away on a turntable, Roberts prefers the power ballads of the early Eighties. In fact, instead of the cinema of the Seventies that inspired Bertino, Roberts prefers 80s fare, from the early MTV soundtrack to the Argento-esque title sequence to the campground setting.

This is a self-conscious slasher with jump scares, frequent bloodletting and a marauder who is profoundly difficult to kill.

Roberts borrows a lot. Not just from Bertino’s original, but also scads of other horror gems from across the eras (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Town that Dreaded Sundown, Friday the 13th, Bava’s Carnage and so many more).

And while cinematographer Ryan Samul cannot grip you with dread the way Peter Sova’s creeping camera and quiet wide shots did ten years back, he can frame a shot.

That shot 1) has usually been lifted from another source, and 2) often contains a nearly-ludicrous image. Still, there are more than a few beautifully macabre sequences in this movie. One poolside episode is particularly impressive.

Still, the main problem with The Strangers: Prey at Night is that it gets comfortable in clichés, where the stinging original subverted them. That doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s not. It’s a nasty little piece of entertainment, unoriginal but competent.

And you cannot expect originality from a sequel, of course. You just hope it can be memorable. The Strangers: Prey at Night is not.