Candid. Messy. Bloody, even. There are a number of
adjectives you could use to describe Saint Francis, an indie dramedy
from director Alex Thompson and writer/star Kelly O’Sullivan. Precious is not
one of them.
That fact in itself is maybe victory enough given that the
film concerns a lost, underachieving millennial (“I’m on the cusp!”) who finds
her way with the help of the 5-year-old (Ramona Edith Williams, unreasonably
cute) she nannies over the summer.
That could have been a recipe for precocious, heartstring-tugging disaster. I can say without reservation that Saint Frances is not that. There’s definitely too much menstrual blood and abortion humor, first of all.
For the bulk of the film, Bridget (O’Sullivan) is a terrible
person, a selfish fuck up, which makes Saint Frances groundbreaking in
its own way. It’s so uncommon, the Peter Pan effect as embodied by a female.
They always make us Wendys.
O’Sullivan’s version is never the uproarious riot of Amy Schumer’s
Trainwreck, or the introspective yet raucous Obvious Child. And
while comparisons to those two crowd pleasing genre busters are clear, Saint
Frances really is its own beast—one that abandons formula in favor of often
unpleasant reality and a sometimes delightful mean streak.
O’Sullivan—both as writer and as lead—brings a kind of deadpan wisdom to the already well-worn idea of directionless adult forced to face adulthood by a spunky youngster. Part of the film’s glory is its very untidiness, both structural and visual.
Thompson, showing solid instincts with his feature debut,
does cave once or twice to overt convention (let’s call it “the juice box
montage”), and the unstoppably supportive Jace (Max Lipchitz) is less a
character than he is a vehicle for growth.
Still, for raw, sloppy honesty, you’re not likely to find a better candidate.
Nobody wants to go out, and even if you did, there is nowhere to go. So, hunker down and let us help you find something to watch. Here’s what’s new in home entertainment.
As we salute the tireless work of our great doctors and health care workers during this uneasy time, Fright Club looks at our favorite “bad doctors” in horror!
5. Herbert West, Re-Animator (1985)
Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator reinvigorated the Frankenstein
storyline in a decade glutted with vampire films. Based, as so many
fantasy/horror films are, on the work of H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator
boasts a good mix of comedy and horror, some highly subversive ideas, and one
really outstanding villain.
Jeffrey Combs, with his intense gaze and pout, his ability to mix comic
timing with epic self righteousness without turning to caricature, carries the
film beginning to end. His Dr. Herbert West has developed a day-glo serum that
reanimates dead tissue, but a minor foul up with his experimentations – some
might call it murder – sees him taking his studies to the New England medical
school Miskatonic University. There he rents a room and basement laboratory
from handsome med student Dan Caine (Bruce Abbott).
They’re not just evil scientists. They’re also really bad doctors.
Re-Animator is fresh. It’s funny and shocking, and though most
performances are flat at best, those that are strong more than make up for it.
First-time director Gordon’s effort is superb. He glories in the macabre fun of
his scenes, pushing envelopes and dumping gallons of blood and gore. He
balances anxiety with comedy, mines scenes for all they have to give, and takes
you places you haven’t been.
4. Beverly and Elliot Mantle, Dead Ringers, (1988)
This film is about separation anxiety, with the effortlessly melancholy
Jeremy Irons playing a set of gynecologist twins on a downward spiral.
Writer/director David Cronenberg doesn’t consider this a horror film at all.
Truth is, because the twin brothers facing emotional and mental collapse are
gynecologists, Cronenberg is wrong.
Take, for instance, the scene with the middle aged woman in stirrups, camera
on her face, which is distorted with discomfort. Irons’s back is to the screen,
her bare foot to his left side. Clicking noises distract you as the doctor
works away. We pan right to a tray displaying the now-clearly-unstable doctor’s
set of hand-fashioned medical instruments. Yikes.
Irons is brilliant, bringing such flair and, eventually, childlike charm to
the performances you feel almost grateful. The film’s pace is slow and its
horror subtle, but the uncomfortable moments are peculiarly, artfully
Cronenberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhPeVnz0NvI
2. Dr. Heiter, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
After a handful of middling Dutch comedies, Tom Six stumbled upon inspiration – 100% medically accurate inspiration. Yes, we mean the Human Centipede. Just the First Sequence makes the list, though.
For a lot of viewers, the Human Centipede films are needlessly gory and over-the-top with no real merit. But for some, Six is onto something. His first effort uses a very traditional horror storyline – two pretty American girls have a vehicular break down and find peril – and takes that plot in an unusual direction. But where most horror filmmakers would finish their work as the victims wake up and find themselves sewn together, mouth to anus, this is actually where Six almost begins.
Although the film mines something primal about being helpless in the hands of surgeons and doctors, it’s Dieter Laser and his committed, insane performance that elevates this film. That and your own unholy desire to see what happens to the newly conjoined tourists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPBdEa5tjR4
2. Dr. Genessier, Eyes Without a Face (1960)
The formula behind this film has been stolen and reformulated for dozens of
lurid, low-brow exploitation films since 1960. In each, there is a mad doctor
who sees his experiments as being of a higher order than the lowly lives they
ruin; the doctor is assisted by a loyal, often non-traditionally attractive
(some might say handsome) nurse; there are nubile young women who will soon be
victimized, as well as a cellar full of the already victimized. But somehow, in
this originator of that particular line of horror, the plot works seamlessly.
An awful lot of that success lies in the remarkable performances. Pierre Brasseur, as the stoic surgeon torn by guilt and weighed down by insecurities about his particular genius, brings a believable, subtle egomania to the part seldom seen in a mad scientist role.
Still, the power in the film is in the striking visuals that are the trademark of giant French filmmaker Georges Franju. His particular genius in this film gave us the elegantly haunting image of Dr. Genessier’s daughter Christiane (Edith Scob). Her graceful, waiflike presence haunts the entire film and elevates those final scenes to something wickedly sublime.
1. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Who else but Hannibal the Cannibal?
Anthony Hopkins’s eerie calm, his measured speaking, his
superior grin give Lecter power. Everything about his performance reminds the
viewer that this man is smarter than you and he’ll use that for dangerous ends.
He’s toying with you. You’re a fly in his web – and what he will do to you hits
at our most primal fear, because we are, after all, all part of a food chain.
Chris Pine plays against type in this 2009 pandemic horror
currently streaming on most platforms including Netflix.
Pine plays Brian, a hardened young man who believes he may
be immune to the virus that has decimated the global population. But, just to
be safe, he chalks his survival up to a handful of rules he keeps. He also
enforces these rules with three fellow survivors: his girlfriend Bobby (Piper
Perabo), his little brother Dany (Lou Taylor Pucci), and Danny’s friend Kate (Emily
VanCamp).
Following Brian’s rules to the letter (or else), the four
cross the country in search of the childhood vacation destination the boys feel
sure is a safe, quiet place to ride out the apocalypse.
Writers/directors/brothers David and Alex Pastor tread some
familiar territory here, but their even-handed approach and ear for authentic
relationships make for an involving and ultimately moving horror. Character behaviors
rarely challenge believability, and the performances suit characters who’ve
been dealing with this problem and with each other longer than the audience is
aware.
There’s a natural pull between Danny and Bobby: the desire
to just survive and the dread of surviving alone, a reluctance to do the wrong
thing and yet an even stronger reluctance to wind up the sole survivor.
Character relationships have a real lived-in quality, which
gives the film an emotional heft you may not be ready for. Pine, in particular,
excels in a role quite unlike those he’s more famous for.
The body horror is effective, but it’s not the real source
of horror.
As in all outbreak/infestation/apocalyptic flicks from the earliest Romero to the upcoming Quiet Place 2, this film understands that desperate humans are at least as dangerous as the cause of the pandemic. Interestingly, run-ins with other survivors, both the good and the bad kind, are played in Carriers with a real mixture of terror and sympathy. It’s one of the many reasons that the film delivers a harder emotional punch than you might be expecting.
About a year ago, Universal Studios pulled the release of The
Hunt because of the amount of gun violence. Commendable.
Later that year, other studios released Ready
or Not—critical darling, but didn’t do great box office. Then Knives
Out, which was both a critical darling and box office giant. And, of
course, Parasite
would go on to win all the Oscars. Even documentary short.
While The Hunt does contain a goodly amount of
violence—guns, knives, hand grenades, pens, stilettos, kitchen appliances—it
also boasts the one thing that appears to be the universal key to
entertainment. It hates rich people.
Who doesn’t?!
Director Craig Zobel (Compliance), along with writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof (both of TV’s Watchmen and The Leftovers), takes no prisoners as characters take a bunch of prisoners, drop them in a field somewhere and, you know, hunt them down for sport. The film gleefully skewers both the left and the right, often in ways you wouldn’t expect but should.
This is a meticulously structured horror film, the tidy
beats allowing the writers to insert surprises that play on your preconceived
notions in clever ways. Like Jordan Peele, Zobel proves a nimble manipulator of
both horror tropes and social commentary.
And casting.
I have to think Betty Gilpin was the most disappointed when
this film was shelved last year because it is her break out. No more support
work as the hot mean chick, Gilpin’s Crystal is the wrong badass to
underestimate. The performance is never showy but quirky and genuine, which
goes a long way toward increasing believability.
Zobel populates the herd with familiar faces (Emma Roberts,
Ike Barinholtz, Hilary Swank, Amy Madigan), mainly for sleight of hand. Though
most get little screen time, and each is handed a fairly one-dimensional
character, both the writing and the performances mine that gimmick for a lot.
Positioned to infuriate everyone in one scene or another, the film is brash and bracingly level headed. It’s violent AF, no doubt, but what it reflects back at us is far smarter than what you might expect. The Hunt is a darkly comedic, socially savvy, equal opportunity skewering and it is a blast.
Like Todd Haynes’s 1995 film Safe, Swallow shadows
a lovely homemaker with little of merit to occupy her time who eventually falls
prey to an unusual malady.
Dressed like something out of a 1950s pantyhose ad, Hunter (a transfixing Haley Bennett) fluffs pillows, prepares dinner, and waits for her husband Richie (Austin Stowell) to come home from work. She’s so grateful. Just really thankful, she nods in a hushed, respectful, humble tone.
You might think that pregnancy would give Hunter something meaningful to do with her time: prepare the nursery, read up on parenting, that sort of thing. But the only thing she really wants to do now is to swallow things she shouldn’t.
Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.
At times almost Hitchcockian in its suspense, anxiety and balance of gender hysterics, Swallow feels urgently present but simultaneously old-fashioned. The costume choices, the vacant expression Hunter wears like a mask, the way she smooths and tucks her hair—all of it rings with the tone of the dementedly June Cleaver-esque.
Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing
scenes drive the narrative, it’s Bennett’s performance that elevates the film.
Serving as executive producer as well as star, Bennett transforms over the
course of the film.
The path Swallow takes is eerily, sometimes
frustratingly similar to Haynes’s Safe. Both films cover similar themes,
both take on a meticulously crafted visual aesthetic, and both boast
incandescent lead performances. Indeed, Bennett here is every ounce as
believable and touching and transfixing as the great Julianne Moore as Haynes’s
brittle heroine.
But where Haynes played things a little too ambiguously to
satisfy an audience, Mirabella-Davis embraces clarity—although first he flirts
and then dances with it before the full bear hug. The first half of this film
is almost sleight of hand, the filmmaker telegraphing imagery too meticulous
and obvious.
When things finally burst, though, director and star shake
off the traditional storytelling, the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening
or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a
bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.
Hot damn, look at these rocks! If you can’t find a movie to entertain you this week as you hide away from the germs outside your door, we can’t help you.
Celine Sciamma follows up the vitally of-the-moment indie Girlhood with this breathy, painterly period romance only to clarify that she is a filmmaker with no identifiable bounds. In the 1790s on a forbidding island in Brittany, Marianne (Noemie Merlant) arrives to paint the wedding portrait of Heloise (Adele Haenel), but since Heloise is not marrying voluntarily, she will not sit for a painter. So, a ruse is developed: Marianne pretends to be simply a companion as she steals glances then sketches from memory into the night.
What develops along with the startlingly beautiful
intimacy between the women is a thoughtful rumination on memory and on art, on
the melancholic but no less romantic notion that the memory, though lonesome,
is permanent and perfect.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a tenderly romantic
film of self-discovery that asks a lot of questions.
What would life be like with no men at all, the film seems to ask. Unseen, nameless men (because we see very few) may rule the world, and the existence of one casts a pall over the events of the film. But, at least until Mother (Valeria Golino) returns with news of the wedding, this is a community of women.
On the island, women gather at a bonfire, passing time,
singing and seeking each other’s guidance. In the austere mansion, Heloise,
Marianne and servant Sophie (Luana Bajrami) look after one another. In a more
intimate chamber, two women become friends and then lovers and then, likely,
the most important relationship the other will ever have.
Offering a master class in visual storytelling, Sciamma relies far less on words than images, ending conversations or omitting them entirely, able instead to deliver meaning with a glance, a gesture, a flame or an ocean wave.
And with art. What Sciamma is able to convey about love,
struggle, empowerment and art by virtue of the changing canvas on which
Marianna must commit Heloise’s portrait is truly extraordinary.
Sciamam’s film has a painterly quality, frame after frame worthy of museum wall space. And yet, Portrait lacks artifice. Thomas Grezaud’s set design, Dorothee Guiraud’s costumes and, in particular, Claire Mathon’s cinematography blend together to create a costume drama worthy of the historical and art period in question.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is breathtakingly gorgeous. But, like Heloise’s portrait in the film, that’s not enough to make it a masterpiece. It’s the authenticity to the intimacy—perhaps partly born of the fact that Haenel and Sciamma are a real life couple—that’s inescapable, and it drives the piece.
Like Marianna’s final portrait, Sciamma’s film offers truth, and it’s astonishing.
Leave it to our Correspondent from the Future, Cory Metcalfe, to come up with this killer topic. We rank the best horror films in which not one single person dies—not during the running time, anyway. And yet, they’re scary. Well, they range from funny to spooky to unsettling to terrifying, but these films prove that a good filmmaker can terrify you without pushing the knife all the way in.
5. Compliance (2012)
Compliance is an unsettling, frustrating and upsetting film about misdirected and misused obedience. It’s also one of the most impeccably made and provocative films of 2012 – a cautionary tale that’s so unnerving it’s easier just to disbelieve. But don’t.
Writer/director Craig Zobel – who began his career as co-creator of the brilliant comic website Homestar Runner (so good!) – takes a decidedly dark turn with this “based-on-true-events” tale. It’s a busy Friday night at a fast food joint and they’re short staffed. Then the police call and say a cashier has stolen some money from a customer’s purse.
A Milgram’s experiment come to life, the film spirals into nightmare as the alleged thief’s colleagues agree to commit increasingly horrific deeds in the name of complying with authority.
4. They Look Like People (2015)
Christian (Evan Dumouchel) is killing it. He’s benching 250 now, looks mussed but handsome as he excels at work, and he’s even gotten up the nerve to ask out his smokin’ hot boss. On his way home from work to change for that date he runs into his best friend from childhood, Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), who’s looking a little worse for wear. Christian doesn’t care. With just a second’s reluctance, Christian invites him in – to his apartment, his date, and his life.
But there is something seriously wrong with Wyatt.
Writer/director Perry Blackshear’s film nimbly treads the same ground as the wonderful Frailty and the damn near perfect Take Shelter in that he uses sympathetic characters and realistic situations to blur the line between mental illness and the supernatural.
3. The Conjuring (2014)
James Wan’s classic haunted house tale delivered real scares from start to finish. Yes, this is an old fashioned ghost story, built from the ground up to push buttons of childhood terror. But don’t expect a long, slow burn. Director James Wan expertly balances suspense with quick, satisfying bursts of visual terror.
Wan understands the power of a flesh and blood villain in a way that other directors don’t seem to, eschewing CGI for practical effects and understanding that our physical danger is not always as terrifying as what could happen to our souls.
2. Freaks (1932)
Short and sweet, like most of its performers, Tod Browning’s controversial film Freaks is one of those movies you will never forget. Populated almost entirely by unusual actors – midgets, amputees, the physically deformed, and an honest to god set of conjoined twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) – Freaks makes you wonder whether you should be watching it at all. This, of course, is an underlying tension in most horror films, but with Freaks, it’s right up front. Is what Browning does with the film empathetic or exploitative, or both? And, of course, am I a bad person for watching this film?
Well, that’s not for us to say. We suspect you may be a bad person, perhaps even a serial killer. Or maybe that’s Hope. What we can tell you for sure is that this film is unsettling, and the final, rainy act of vengeance is truly creepy to watch.
1. The Babadook (2014)
You’re exhausted – just bone-deep tired – and for the umpteenth night in a row your son refuses to sleep. He’s terrified, inconsolable. You check under the bed, you check in the closet, you read a book together – no luck. You let him choose the next book to read, and he hands you a pop-up you don’t recognize: The Babadook. Pretty soon, your son isn’t the only one afraid of what’s in the shadows.
Writer/director Jennifer Kent’s film is expertly written and beautifully acted, boasting unnerving performances from not only a stellar lead in Essie Davis, but also the alarmingly spot-on young Noah Wiseman. Davis’s lovely, loving Amelia is so recognizably wearied by her only child’s erratic, sometimes violent behavior that you cannot help but pity her, and sometimes fear for her, and other times fear her.
Much of what catapults The Babadook beyond similar “presence in my house” flicks is the allegorical nature of the story. There’s an almost subversive relevance to the familial tensions because of their naked honesty, and the fight with the shadowy monster as well as the film’s unusual resolution heighten tensions.
