Most weeks there’s at least one streaming movie option that
will cost you. These are ostensibly the films that were meant to be theatrical
releases, as opposed to your garden variety direct-to-streaming options. The
idea is that you’re paying a premium to get to see it now, rather than waiting
for theaters to open up.
It’ll be interesting to see how long this tactic lasts, but one thing is for sure: You Should Have Left is not worth $20.
Always likeable, always reliable Kevin Bacon reteams with
his Stir of Echoes writer/director David Koepp to bring Daniel Kehlmann’s
novel to the screen.
Bacon plays Theo, a man with a past and a much younger wife
(Amanda Seyfried), Susanna. She’s a sought after actress and he’s feeling a
little neglected, so they decide to spend the three weeks between her shoots
with their 6-year-old Ella (Avery Tiiu Essex) in a remote rental property one of
them found online.
Which one found it, though?
From the early dream sequences to the small town shopkeep
with an accent, an attitude and a secret to—well, hell, every single thing—You
Should Have Left squeezes the life out of standard horror tropes.
Not that this is horror, really. It’s certainly not scary. I
wouldn’t call it a thriller, either, assuming those have to thrill at some
point. Nope, it’s just a boring, predictable waste of talent.
Seyfried, in particular, elevates her stale character,
sharing a believably conflicted lived-in chemistry with Bacon. Uncharacteristically,
it’s Bacon who struggles.
Theo’s internal conflict is weakly depicted, his arc equally
anemic, and for that reason, his epiphany feels unearned. The actor does
develop a lovely onscreen relationship with Essex, although she’s asked to do
little more than look pensive.
Or maybe she was bored. Hard to blame her when Koepp works
so hard to make the film tedious. Uninspired sound design and mediocre FX blend
together with the filmmaker’s hum drum storytelling to betray a tiresome lack
of imagination.
No way Universal believes they deserve your $20 for this.
7500, the emergency code for an airplane hijacking,
is the title of the feature debut for writer/director Patrick Vollrath. An
Oscar-nominated and much lauded filmmaker of shorts, Vollrath and his lead,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, prove fine instincts for building tension while
maintaining understatement in a film that probably just shouldn’t have been
made.
Gordon-Levitt plays Tobias Ellis, co-pilot of a German
aircraft on its way to Paris. When Muslim terrorists attempt to overtake the
plane, Tobias finds himself in the unenviable position of refusing their
demands and witnessing the havoc they wreak.
We haven’t really seen JGL since Oliver Stone’s mediocre 2016 biopic Snowden. (He’s done a lot of voice work since, but we haven’t seen him.) But there was a time when the ageless actor (he’ll be 40 in February but he’s still playing baby faced 30-year-olds) appeared in almost every interesting film being released: Inception, The Dark Night Rises, Looper. And then came his own debut as writer/director: Don Jon—the best antidote for a romantic comedy perhaps ever.
Since then, even when his performance is solid (and it usually is), his film choice is not.
There are some exceptional reasons for the actor to show us
his face again in 7500. The role offers clear, no doubt fascinating
challenges. Much of the film is a one-man-show, and more intriguingly, the
actor and filmmaker work together to ensure that this hero is as dialed-down
and honest as he can be.
Vollrath’s film never revels in vengeance, never lusts after opportunities for comeuppance. And the downplayed emotion, the minutia of flying, the fear—all elements generally discarded in your Big Heroic Movie—give this film an unexpected air of humility.
Better still is the savvy use of limited vision, the claustrophobic
nature of air travel, the confinement of the hero to ratchet up tensions.
And yet.
For its subdued, humble approach, 7500 is a white
savior film about an American man protecting those in his care from scary brown
people. It picks a scab that’s been fingered to death, offers no real new take
and absolutely no excuse for its choice of antagonist.
This isn’t a true story. Vollrath could have imagined absolutely anyone to be hijacking this plane, and the subtlety of the filmmaking feels even more insidious because of his choice. No swelling strings, glib one-liners, flying flags or bombast mark this as pandering white supremacy.
Witches, starvation, ghouls, oppression, Church and governmental oppression—there’s a reason they call them the Dark Ages! Filmmaker George Popov (Hex, The Droving) joins us to discuss the best horror movies about the Dark Ages.
6. Black Death (2010)
What Christopher Smith (Severance) delivers with Black Death that few if any horror filmmakers tackling the same themes match is a clear eye as to the flaws and merits on both sides of the witch hunt.
Eddie Redmayne is an innocent and a believer; Sean Bean is no innocent, but he does believe. Both are part of a Christian army who get word of a village untouched by pestilence—a village where some say the dead have been raised.
What follows is a punishingly human drama about using religion to suit your own ends, about what evil we are and are not willing to accept, and about the end of innocence.
5. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
The sixth of seven Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe films—and maybe the best—sees Price in a role that delights in its own evil.
No Corman film has ever used color to such glorious extreme, a tactic absolutely in keeping with Poe’s text. The film works from a short story, padding with subplots (one from Poe, one from elsewhere) that work well within the story and generate a little emotional depth beneath the lurid color and debauchery.
Stay through to the end, whatever you do, but do give this one a chance.
4. Hex (2017)
Two soldiers separated from their companies during England’s Civil War chase each other into a deep forest. The rebel Thomas (William Young) is young, soft and open to the dark poetry and doom of witchcraft. He’s not long in the woods before he sees his true enemy is not the countryman behind him with his sword drawn.
Richard (Daniel Oldroyd) fights for King and Country, strident and single-minded, logic keeps him from believing until he has little choice.
There is more happening here than you realize, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that you only recognize the film’s purpose when they are ready for you to do so. The result is a satisfying tale with more power than just magic.
3. Army of Darkness (1992)
Easily the most fun you’ll have with a Dark Ages film, Army of Darkness is Sam Raimi’s third and silliest installment in his Evil Dead trilogy. In it, like a Connecticut Yankee, hero Ash (Bruce Campbell at his buffest) finds himself transported to dark times.
You know what he finds. Deadites.
Ash must woo the girl (and then maybe accidentally get her changed into a deadite, which will necessitate killing her), say the spell (which he may or may not entirely screw up, inadvertently raising an army of darkness), and save the day.
Endlessly quotable, utterly bananas, and just a thrill ride of Monty Python meets Three Stooges meets Ray Harryhausen fun, Army of Darkness is a treasure.
2. The Head Hunter (2018)
In a land of yore, the geography forbidding, a far off
trumpet calls for the hardiest of warriors—those equipped to fight beasts.
Director Jordan Downey shows much and tells little in his
nearly wordless medieval fantasy, The Head Hunter. The filmmaker parses
out all the information you’ll need to follow this simple vengeance myth, but
pay attention. Very little in this film is without meaning—no creepy image, no
creak or slam.
In what is essentially a one man show, Christopher Rygh
delivers a quiet, brooding performance for a quiet, brooding film. He cuts an
impressive figure as the Vikingesque warrior at the center of this adventure
and his work speaks of joyless endurance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZqtRbifT6Q
1.Hagazussa (2017)
Making a remarkably assured feature debut as director, Lukas Feigelfeld
mesmerizes with his German Gothic poetry, Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse.
Settled somewhere in the 15th Century Alps, the film shadows lonely, ostracized women struggling against a period where plague, paranoia and superstition reigned.
It would be easy to mistake the story Feigelfeld (who also writes) develops as a take on horror’s common “is she crazy or is there malevolence afoot?” theme. But the filmmaker’s hallucinatory tone and Aleksandra Cwen’s grounded performance allow Hagazussa to straddle that line and perhaps introduce a third option—maybe both are true.
The film lends itself to a reading more lyrical than literal. Feigelfeld’s influences from Murnau to Lynch show themselves in his deliberate pacing and the sheer beauty of his delusional segments. He’s captured this moment in time, this draining and ugly paranoia that caused women such misery, with imagery that is perplexingly beautiful.
Veteran British writer Frank Cottrell Boyce (Welcome to Sarajevo, Millions) adapts his own short story of a grieving if dapper tailor, a not-so-prodigal son, making the best of a sad substitute, and Scrabble.
Thanks to the vision of first time feature director Carl
Hunter, Sometimes Always Never enjoys an eccentrically stylish,
elegantly odd presentation. Hunter, in turns, finds those exact same characteristic
in its sublime lead, Bill Nighy.
The film tags along as dapper Alan (Nighy) and his son Peter
(Sam Riley) drive some distance together. They’ve been summoned to an
out-of-town morgue to identify a body.
Between Hunter’s deliberate framing and set composition and
Nighy’s droll but endearing presence, the film cannot help but charm. But the
delightful and eye-catching style belies a grieving heart.
Nighy, of course, is brilliant—and how fun is it to watch him lead a film rather than take the screen as some minor if wonderful character? In his hands, Alan is unknowable but not intimidating. He’s spry and precisely drawn, never sentimental for a beat, and yet endlessly tender. Nighy owes Boyce a great debt for creating such a beautifully layered odd duck, and all of us owe Nighy even more for bringing Alan to life in his inimitable way.
Hunter surrounds his lead with a solid ensemble committed to understatement. Riley’s emotional turmoil has a resigned, lived-in quality that’s both sad and sweet. Jenny Agutter and Tim McInnerny (Severance), likewise, deliver the human contradiction of comedy and tragedy, while Alice Lowe (Prevenge) is just the sweetheart the film needs for balance.
Balance is an excellent word—though it may not net as many points as some more strategic choices, or is it as fun to say as “soap.” But in terms of the visuals versus the dialog, or the emotional versus the comedic, Hunter keeps a grip and never lets the film tip this way or that.
That doesn’t always feel true to the profound tragedy that has befallen this family and has caused, slowly but surely over the many years, the fractures Alan is attempting to mend. This pain too often feels overlooked, becoming a slight that keeps Sometimes Always Never from reaching its own cinematic potential.
Micro-budget horror movie The Deeper You Dig is co-written and co-directed by husband and wife John Adams and Toby Poser, who co-star alongside their daughter Zelda Adams. This is a story about an unusual family created by an unusual family.
The film centers on a close if unconventional mother/daughter duo (Poser and Adams the younger). The two make ends meet in a rugged mountain town by taking advantage of townies looking to hear their fortunes. But when her daughter goes missing, Ivy (Poser) reconnects with her long-forgotten abilities to determine what the police can’t.
Poser is particularly impressive, and what may be the most
intriguing thing about the way the film is written is how both Ivy and daughter
Echo are characterized. No cliché suits these two—each is carved out uniquely,
a blend of dissonant ideas that feel authentically human. Their undiscussed but
clearly present “outsider” nature only serves to underscore their emotional
need for each other, which gives the mystery resonance and adds a little
integrity to the supernatural elements as well.
Ivy’s relationship with new-in-town Kurt (John Adams) is
even more peculiar—rightly so. Adams the elder delivers a twisty, haunted
performance that’s the real heart of the film’s horror. His work is both
physical and emotional, with personality changes that never feel forced or
showy.
Not every performance is as strong as the central three, and
not every beat in the plot works. Certain moments feel pulled from TV
melodramas, and the film’s micro-budget is most felt whenever CGI is employed.
But The Deeper You Dig makes an excellent case for
seeking out low-budget indies. It’s creepy and satisfying. It explodes clichés,
keeps you guessing, and takes advantage of the clear trust among the actors to
create an unusual and compelling family dynamic.
Even with its handful of missteps, The Deeper You Dig clearly represents a group of filmmaking talent to keep an eye on.
Finally, someone truly understands what it’s like to be an
incredibly angry adolescent girl.
At the very least, Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s film Becky
understands enough to be afraid of her.
The titular 13-year-old, played with convincing charisma by Lulu Wilson, is a handful for her widowed father (Joel McHale). Still, dad has decided this is the weekend to take Becky for a getaway with his girlfriend (Amanda Brugel), and her 5-year-old (Isaiah Rockcliffe). They head to the old vacation cabin for a big talk.
He soon finds that his 13-year-old may not be the scariest
thing on earth.
Or, you know what? Maybe she is.
Kevin James plays against type as a swastika-tatted up inmate, leader of a band of escapees. James may be hoping to catch the same mid-career fire Vince Vaughn has been fanning, mainly portraying the heavy in various indie thrillers. Early scenes play well, James cutting a solemnly menacing figure as he quietly organizes and orchestrates. But as the film wears on it becomes clear the actor can’t manage the sinister energy needed to really make an impression.
I’ll take this over Paul Blart, though.
Robert Maillet’s a lot of fun, though. At 6’10”, the one-time
wrestler dwarfs even the gangly McHale. He’s no master thespian, but his arc
creates a spectacular punctuation for Becky’s own transformation and his sheer
immensity brings a little needed anxiety to the film.
The writing team, which includes Lane and Ruckus Skye of the brilliant and as-of-yet undistributed Devil to Pay (originally titled Reckoning), cheats a little with this script. Backstories, motivations and mysteries—particularly as they articulate the villainous characters—feel less undefined than lazily obscured. Between that and James’s inability to truly sell the viciousness in his character, the family’s jeopardy lacks the intensity it needs for this film to truly impress.
Wilson does not. In her hands, Becky is a fascinating character, and it is with this character that the writing team and directors score the most points. The film is bloody, angry and, even for its fairly formulaic premise, unpredictable.
“It was intended to play as homophobic rather than homoerotic.”
So says David Chaskin, writer of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge—a film many consider to be the gayest horror movie ever made. Chaskin has long shared the belief that it was the casting of Mark Patton in the lead role, the “final boy,” that pushed the envelope from homophobic to homoerotic.
Chaskin is right.
Thank God for casting.
The mid-Eighties hardly needed another homophobic movie, or another AIDS-terrified horror flick. Did it need the story of an adolescent boy whose homosexual nature emerges as some monstrous id, only to be cured by the love of a good woman? No, but if you just don’t watch the last ten minutes of the film, Nightmare 2 is a bizarre and glorious B-movie coming out party.
Again, thanks to Mark Patton.
Patton is the center of the Shudder documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street. He also produces, which means he gives the footage his OK, leading to a film that comes off as self-congratulatory and self-indulgent more often than it should. But there is no denying Patton’s life has been fascinating.
Patton’s a charming, charismatic vehicle for the doc and the insight he offers into burgeoning stardom, closeted Hollywood and the Eighties is riveting. He’d lived quite a life before his first feature lead likely ended his career—but what he survived outside Elm Street was certainly tougher.
So much so that Patton’s particular anxiety about how this
film affected him and his career sometimes feels misplaced. But watching how
his perception of the “gay controversy” has evolved and what that evolution has
allowed him to do within the gay community is delightful.
Of course, equally fascinating for horror fans is the debate as to who did and did not realize how profoundly gay Nightmare 2 was. Patton’s co-stars—Robert Englund (Freddy himself) comes off especially well—each add to the conversation in entertaining ways, though director Jack Sholder should maybe stop talking.
First time filmmakers Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen seem unsure of their real aim: to tell Mark’s story, to help Mark find closure, to deconstruct the film’s subtext, to explore its lasting meaning for the LGBTQ community. Because of their meandering focus, Scream, Queen feels longer than it needs to be.
Lucky for the filmmakers, every one of those topics makes for an intriguing investigation, and watching Patton triumphantly recreate his iconic (and likely career-ending) dance scene is sheer joy.
Good documentaries transcend art and commerce by helping us understand who we are, where we came from and where (hopefully) we may be going. These five films prove the necessity and urgency of the #blacklivesmatter movement and help to contextualize our current situation and the need for dramatic change.
Whose Streets?
Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay, Vudu, Hulu.
Moving like a living, breathing monument to revolution, Whose Streets? captures a flashpoint in history with gripping vibrancy, as it bursts with an outrage both righteous and palpable. Activists Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis share directing duties on their film debut, bringing precise, insightful storytelling instincts to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, they provide a new and sharp focus to the events surrounding the 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson.
Wexner Center’s Paul Hill and filmmaker April Martin’s documentary exposes the similarities between 2014 events in Ferguson, MO surrounding the murder of Michael Brown and events in Cincinnati beginning in 1995 and culminating in riots following the suspicious, police-involved deaths of Roger Owensby in November, 2000 and Timothy Thomas in April, 2001.
The final product delivers an incisive look at
the roots and ramifications of systemic racism. The filmmakers speak candidly
with bereaved family members and witnesses, weave in crime scene footage and
the news coverage of the day, and speak to historians, activists, police and
political leaders to paint a picture that becomes jarringly prescient.
13th
Available on Netflix.
Director Ava DuVernay followed her triumphant Selma with an urgent dissection of mass incarceration in the United States. Packed with testimony from those who know, propelled by the force and vision of a director who knows how to tell a story, this is as gripping and necessary a film as you will find. Informative, stirring, and heartbreaking, 13th delivers a lesson that is essential to understanding both the ugly roots of America, and how shamefully deep they remain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jBRPjImuw
The Seven Five
Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay.
If current events haven’t satisfied your appetite for stories of cops behaving badly, take a trip back to the 1980s with The Seven Five. It’s a sobering look at Mike Dowd, the man dubbed “the dirtiest cop in history,” as well as the law enforcement code of silence that still appears shockingly prevalent.
Director Tiller Russell uses footage from
Dowd’s 1993 hearing testimony as an effective bookend to current interviews
with Dowd and several of his cohorts. The chill that comes from a younger Dowd
testifying that a good cop means “being 100 percent behind anything another cop
does” only intensifies when you hear one of his old partners recalling the
prevailing attitude of their criminal heyday.
Peace Officer
Available on Tubi, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu.
How, and why, did we get the point where tactics and weapons of the military are standard issue for police forces across the country?
This film’s strength lies in its
nuance, and in its refusal to provide snap judgements. Rather than looking to
vilify police officers, the goal here is to understand how the system itself
has become untenable, all but guaranteeing continued tragedies.
It’s not a fun conversation, but
it’s one that’s long overdue. Peace Officer may
speak softly, but it’s hard to imagine an American film that is more urgent.
You can’t go home again. You can go to Cyprus again, though,
which is what director Peter Medak does in an attempt to come to terms with the
project that nearly derailed his blossoming career.
Objectivity be damned!
Medak’s documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers
deconstructs the disaster that was his unreleased 1973 pirate comedy Ghost
in the Noonday Sun. Medak believes he may be the first director to make
such a documentary.
He’s not entirely wrong. Richard Rush directed a doc about the making of his own The Stunt Man – but that was an Oscar-nominated success. And though Terry Gilliam was involved in Lost in La Mancha—a doc outlining the endless disasters that doomed his first attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote— he was not the director.
Rather, this time the documentary is the filmmaker himself documenting
not his successes but his massive, almost career-ending failure. That failure
was partly due to incessant weather troubles and other catastrophes—hell, his
pirate ship sank the day it arrived in Cyprus.
But according to Medak, those involved in the shoot and
those who knew the actor best, the main problem was Peter Sellers.
“It’s not as if any of us didn’t know that Peter was nuts,”
remarks the incredibly sage producer John Hayman, nearly 50 years after the
fact. “But none of us knew how nuts.”
Medak’s clearly been haunted by the production—and, to a
degree, by Sellers—since the shoot wrapped. Riding high at the time on two
critical and box office successes (Negatives, The Ruling Class), the
in-demand director jumped at the chance to direct the brilliant Sellers, then considered
the greatest comedic actor in the world.
But Sellers—possibly, as friends suggest in the film, a man suffering
from an undiagnosed mental health condition who was exploited by money hungry
moviemakers—would not be the artist Medak hoped he’d be.
Lunatic behavior combined with an outright desire to sink
the film turned an already underwhelming script, underfunded production and
nightmarish environment into something crippling.
The stories from the set are fascinating, as are moments of
commiseration between Medak and directors who’d dealt with Sellers on other
films (Casino Royale and the Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu).
Equally interesting are the sympathetic but knowing, even giggling responses
Medak’s tales of woe elicited from Sellers’s family and friends.
“Oh, yes. He definitely did that.”
But too much time spent with director who is also subject
turns many scenes into a self-indulgence.
That doesn’t topple The Ghost of Peter Sellers. Medak’s confessional pity party delivers a compelling look at the wrong side of filmmaking as it offers yet another take on Sellers—his genius as well as his demons.
