Screening Room: Invisible Man, Seberg and More
Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies
Good Intentions
Blood on Her Name
by Hope Madden
Good intentions are very mortal and perishable things.
So are people.
Leigh Tiller lets good intentions muck up what should have been an easy crime to get away with. No one would have known. No one would have suspected. Not that there wouldn’t be complications, but she’d deal with those later.
While co-writer/director Matthew Pope doesn’t reinvent the wheel with his Rust Belt noir Blood on Her Name, it is actually the refreshing simplicity of the storytelling that compels you to pay attention. That and Bethany Anne Lind’s performance.
As Tiller, Lind weaves a dotted line between upstanding and sketchy. Her compass doesn’t always point due North, or maybe it does, or at least maybe it could. Right? It could. It’s this struggle, most of it internal, that Lind characterizes with subtle anguish to give the film an aching, remorseful tenderness, a longing for what should be but what is always just out of reach.
Pope populates his low rent neighborhoods with an intriguing mix of characters, none of whom are rendered with broad strokes. Dani Wilson is especially strong as a fading white trash hottie, while Will Patton finds dimension as an old man who believes he deserves a second chance but probably does not.
Blood on Her Name is a film that should feel bleak but it rebels against its own grim fate. This is a film that knows Leigh Tiller deserved better choices, stronger options. It’s a film that doesn’t want to give up on small town, low rent, hard work. But it’s also a film that’s bracingly clear-eyed about the reality that balances that optimism.
The result is a memorably quiet eulogy.
Just Another Tricky Day
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
by Hope Madden
A seedy motel, a low-rent Sigfreid & Roy, the sketchy side of a tourist town during low season—Albert Shin’s Disappearance at Clifton Hill is a neo-noir told mainly in nostalgic colors, smoke and mirrors.
The setting for the mystery is the Rainbow Inn Motel, a dump just off the Niagara River gorge that’s seen better days, though it’s tough to imagine when those days might have been.
Abby (Tuppence Middleton – British much?) is home to complicate the fulfillment of her mother’s will, because that will involves selling the old Rainbow Inn to the town mogul who looks to raze Abby’s memories in favor of day-glo paint ball.
What is it she remembers, exactly? A fishing trip down in that gorge. A one-eyed boy. A kidnapping.
Shin mines all those wistful ideas about going home again as Abby begins sifting through sordid secrets, wealthy families, and the decay of the once wondrous world of her youth. Where will her sleuthing lead?
Aah, the untapped resources of your local public library. Is that a microfiche machine?!
Shin excels at nailing atmospherics. Tourist trap towns do feel seedier off-season, their sparsely populated amusements somehow sad. In Shin’s hands, the town, its near vacant fun house and caged tigers all conjure the notion of childhood perverted.
Magician’s trickery. Sleight of hand.
The delightfully dodgy Abby is the epitome of an unreliable narrator, although to Shin’s endless credit, we’re not asked to believe something she’s telling us. We are with her, step by step, as she convinces herself of something, which allows us—like Abby herself—to really hope she might actually be on to something.
There’s a fluidity to the way Shin and co-writer James Schultz unveil Abby’s own sketchiness, beginning with a barroom conversation/seduction. This is also where he begins to introduce a delicious stew of supporting characters, each one a little quirkier than the last.
Hannah Gross particularly impresses as Abby’s far more grounded sister Laure, but I was probably most excited about Walter.
When you think of David Cronenberg—and I think of him often—you don’t always consider his acting. But he does add a little something something to films. Here he charms as Walter, area historian and podcaster: “Remember, rate and review.”
Disappearance at Clifton Hill is not a flawless film, but it is deceptively competent. It’s fun and clever. Middleton’s clear eyed yet delusional Nancy Drew never ceases to be appealing.
And just when you think Shin and company have tidied up a little too quickly…smoke and mirrors, my friend.
Late Shift
The Night Clerk
by Hope Madden
Any film centering on a character on the Autism spectrum is risking a lot. It’s far too easy to simplify this character to a handful of tics that lend themselves to a narrative device: Mercury Rising, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Forest Gump. (That’s right. I said it.)
But if it’s done well, if the character is a character and not a narrative device, the film can benefit immeasurably.
The Night Clerk falls somewhere in between these two options.
Writer/director Michael Cristofer leans on a committed cast, including the always wonderful Tye Sheridan in the lead, to pull you into a mystery thriller that may be too simple for its own good.
Sheridan is Bart. He works nights at a hotel near his home and in his off hours he practices. He rehearses human interaction, small talk. He and his mother (Helen Hunt, a touching mixture of brittle and tender) live day to day in what has clearly become well-worn patterns. Most nights at work are probably uneventful, but on this particular night, Bart discovers a murder.
The detective on the case (John Leguizamo) suspects Bart, but Bart is distracted by a kind hearted and lovely new guest (a convincing Ana de Armas).
Without Sheridan’s committed performance, the film would fall apart. At no point does Sheridan, Cristofer or this film condescend to Bart. The audience isn’t one step ahead of the character; we are piecing through the mystery along with him. We aren’t asked by the film to pity Bart but to be frustrated along with him, and Sheridan is up to the task of keeping this character from tipping into martyrdom.
The problem with this film is not the characterization of a young man with Asperger syndrome. The issue is the writing.
Cristofer may nail the characters—and for the most part, with the help of talented performers, he does. But the lapses in logic when it comes to the policework, not to mention the basic simplicity of the plot itself, keeps the film from really engaging or staying with you.
The plot feels almost too uncomplicated to be a TV drama let alone a feature film. Tensions over the outcome never rise above a flutter, and regardless of how strong the performances—de Armas, Hunt and Sheridan, in particular—this is a thriller that rarely manages to generate any real tension.
As a character study it’s intriguing, sometimes comical and certainly respectful. It’s a showcase for solid acting, but not much else.
Jessie’s Boys
Jessica Forever
by Hope Madden
Shudder’s latest premiere, the French film Jessica Forever, offers a scifi antidote to war films. This is a quietly absorbing genre piece concerned with the lives left to those who know nothing more than fighting for survival, those who must endure not only what battle has done to them, but what battle has encouraged them to do.
In an unnamed future, Jessica (Aomi Muyock, Love), collects and rehabilitates “orphans” — feral young men with nothing and no one. Left entirely on their own, they wreak bloody havoc on society and are hunted by government-controlled drones.
We open on one such young man, Kevin (Eddy Suiveng). He’s thrown himself through a pane of glass in what looks to be a recently abandoned home. As a heavily armed tactical unit descends on the premises, only to softly embrace the combatant, writers/directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel introduce the visual and tonal fluidity the film will emphasize throughout its running time.
The dystopian cinematic landscape is highly populated, but Jessica Forever manages to carve out a unique space.
Muyock’s enigmatic central figure, so quietly effecting, provides the film its compelling center of gravity. Around her orbits a loose family of young men, and as Poggi and Vinel weave in and out of their day-to-day, we’re tuned into the filmmakers’ primary interest.
Unlike so very many movies out there, it is not the glamour or danger of war that attracts these filmmakers. Instead, Jessica Forever focuses on the mental and emotional wreckage these young men carry around with them as they cling to each other and their varying ideas of family, home and normalcy.
Everything about the design of this low budget scifi poem is astonishing. Working with cinematographer Marine Atlan, who shot the pair’s short After School Knife Fight, Poggi and Vinel create and sustain a hypnotic mood.
An absurd beauty to some of the shots helps the filmmakers offset its deliberate pacing. The entire crew, sound design in particular, pulls their weight as well, and the cumulative effect moves this lightly plotted ensemble piece in daring directions.
Winter Wonderland
The Lodge
by Hope Madden
It’s Christmas, and regardless of a profound, almost insurmountable family tragedy, one irredeemably oblivious father (Richard Armitage) decides his kids (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) should get to know the woman (Riley Keough) he left their mother for. A week in an isolated mountain cabin during a blizzard should do it.
Dad stays just long enough to make things really uncomfortable, then heads back to town for a few days to work. Surely everybody will be caroling and toasting marshmallows by the time he returns.
Though everything about The Lodge brings to mind A24 horror—for a number of reasons, Hereditary in particular—the film is actually a Hammer effort. No longer the corset-and-bloodletting studio, Hammer’s millennial output has been sparse but often quite good.
Choosing to back filmmakers Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz making their follow up to the supremely creepy Goodnight Mommy should be a solid risk to take. Here the pair does not shy away from the body of “white death” horror that came before The Lodge, with eerie and sometimes humorous nods to The Thing and The Shining, among others, haunting the piece.
The film also brings to mind A24’s It Comes at Night, another quiet film that saw Riley Keough trapped in an isolated abode with unsettling family dynamics. Keough is riding an impressive run of performances and her work here is slippery and wonderful. As the unwanted new member in the family, she’s sympathetic but also brittle.
Jaeden Martell, a kid who has yet to deliver a less than impressive turn, is the human heartbeat at the center of the mystery in the cabin. His tenderness gives the film a quiet, pleading tragedy. Whether he’s comforting his grieving little sister or begging Grace (Keough) to come in from the snow, his performance aches and you ache with him.
A healthy ability to suspend disbelief will aid in the experience The Lodge has to offer, but there’s no denying the mounting dread the filmmakers create, and the three central performances are uniquely effective. Thanks to the actors’ commitment and the filmmakers’ skill in atmospheric horror, the movie grips you, makes you cold and uncomfortable, and ends with a memorable slap.
I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of February 17
It’s a beautiful day in the living room, what with all these excellent movie choices! Well, not every single one is a winner, but that’s what we’re here for. We’ll help you get it sorted.
Click the film title to link to the full review.
Jojo Rabbit
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
21 Bridges
Frankie
Midway
Fright Club: Bad Date Horror
I can see where you might believe that these are films in which bad dates occur. While that might be a fine, future podcast and list, the fact is that today we explore the worst horror movies to watch while you are on a date.
While horror movies can sometimes make for excellent date night choices, these, we predict, will turn the date sour. They are also highly likely to douse any romantic sparks. (And if they don’t, your date is a sociopath. Be warned.)
5. Audition (1999)
The prolific director Takashi Miike made more than 70 movies in his first 20 or so years in film. Among the best is Audition, a phenomenally creepy May/December romance gone very, very wrong.
Audition tells the story of a widower convinced by his TV producer friend to hold mock television auditions as a way of finding a suitable new mate. He is repaid for his deception.
Nearly unwatchable and yet too compelling to turn away from, Audition is a remarkable piece of genre filmmaking. The slow moving picture builds anticipation, then dread, then full-on horror.
By the time Audition hits its ghastly conclusion, Miike and his exquisitely terrifying antagonist (Eihi
4. Irreversible (2002)
French filmmaker/provocateur Gaspar Noe does not play well with his audience. Every film, no matter how brilliantly put together or gloriously filmed, is a feat in masochism to watch. Later efforts, like Enter the Void and Climax, spread the misery out for its full running time, but for Irreversible, he gave it to us in two horrifying scenes.
Filmed in reverse chronological order and featuring those two famously brutal sequences, Noe succeeds in both punishing his viewers and reminding them of life’s simple beauty. While the head bashing is tough viewing, the film centers on a rape scene that is all but impossible to watch.
Noe’s general MO is to punish you through sheer duration. The scenes last so long you feel like you cannot endure another minute, and this scene certainly does that. Not shot even momentarily for titillation, and boasting a devastatingly excellent performance from Monica Bellucci, it justifies its own horrific presence. There are other films with necessary and difficult rape scenes – Straw Dogs, I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on the Left, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – but none is harder to stomach than this.
There’s no denying the intelligence of the script, the aptitude of the director, or the absolute brilliance of Monica Bellucci in an incredibly demanding role.
3. Teeth (2007)
Of all the films built on the hysteria of impending womanhood, few are as specific as Teeth, a film in which a pubescent discovers a sharp set where teeth ought not be. This is a dark comedy and social satire that is uncomfortable to watch no matter your gender, although I imagine it may be a bit rougher on men.
Treading on the dread of coming-of-age and turning male-oriented horror clichés on ear, Teeth uses the metaphor implicit in vagina dentata—a myth originated to bespeak the fear of castration—to craft a parable about the dangers as well as the power of sexual awakening.
Written and directed by artist (and Ohioan!) Roy Lichtenstein’s son Mitchell, Teeth boasts an irreverent if symbol-heavy script with a strong and believable lead performance (Jess Weixler).
Weixler’s evolution from naïveté to shock to guilt to empowerment never ceases to captivate.
2. Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier’s foray into horror follows a couple down a deep and dark rabbit hole of grief. Von Trier’s films have often fixated on punishing viewers and female protagonists alike, but in this film the nameless woman (played fearlessly by Charlotte Gainsbourg) wields most of the punishment – whether upon her mate (Willem Dafoe) or herself.
Consumed by grief, a mother allows her husband—also grieving—to become her psychotherapist as they retreat to their isolated cabin deep in the woods where they will try to overcome the horror of losing their only child.
They won’t succeed.
Like dental scenes, gynecological horror draws a particular reaction. Whether it’s the abuse scene at the beginning of Proxy, nearly any scene in the brilliant French film Inside, or the final feast in Trouble Every Day, scenes of this ilk can be tough to watch. But to watch as Gainsbourg – who’s already inflicted some serious pain on Dafoe’s character – takes the scissors to herself is next to impossible.
1. A Serbian Film (2010)
This is not a movie we would recommend to basically anyone. That’s not to say it’s a bad film – it’s well directed, acted, and written. It’s just that the co-writer/director Srdjan Spasojevic is trying to articulate the soul-deadening effects of surviving the depravity of war.
The title is no coincidence – the film is meant to reflect the reality of a nation so recently involved in among the most horrific, unimaginable acts of war. It’s as if Spasojevic is saying, after all that, what could still shock us?
Milos (Srdjan Todorovic) was a porn star before the war. He’s lured back for one lucrative “acting” effort, but there’s a reason it pays so well.
The entire film is an assault, but there is one scene in this one that catapults it to the top of this list, and you probably already know what that is. Milos (Srdjan Todorovic) finally realizes the depths of his new director’s evil when he sees his latest effort: newborn porn. There is no unseeing this.
Screening Room: Downhill, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Photograph, Come As You Are, Buffaloed
Pretty as a Picture
The Photograph
by Hope Madden
Tis the season, and as Valentine’s-aimed romantic dramedies go, the blandly titled The Photograph could be worse.
Issa Rae (Insecure) leads the cross-generational love story as Mae, NYC museum curator trying to process her grief and an incredibly long letter, both hers now because of her estranged mother Christina’s recent death.
Christina (a solid Chanté Adams), mainly unveiled via flashback, broke from her own difficult mother as well as the love of her life back in Louisiana years ago to follow a career as a photographer in New York.
As Mae learns some painfully obvious truths by way of Christina’s letter, writer/director Stella Meghie (Everything, Everything) weaves two romances together across time to look at the wages of a woman’s ambition and the ways we relive our parents’ mistakes.
There’s plenty to like here, and Meghie’s film certainly looks like a dreamy romance waiting to happen. Scenes are beautifully lit, gorgeously filmed and romantically scored. You can’t fault the casting, either.
LaKeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You) has an easy chemistry with Rae as the journalist interested in Christina’s life, and Meghie surrounds her leads with vibrant supporting characters. Lil Rel Howery, Courtney B. Vance and an underused Kelvin Harrison Jr. all round out the ensemble, adding much needed life.
Rob Morgan (Mudbound, Last Black Man in San Francisco, Just Mercy), wonderful as always, steals his few scenes with a restrained, mournful presence that enriches an insubstantial story. There’s a ragged weariness to his character, one that’s all the more poignant when offset by the buoyancy of Y’lan Noel’s turn as the younger version of the same character.
Meghie has assembled a fine cast, she just doesn’t give them enough to do. Neither love story gets enough room to grow and Mae’s arc feels forced and rushed. Because Christina is gone before the cameras role, Meghie handles Mae’s conflict with her mother exclusively through clunky dialog, and the usually reliable Rae has trouble conveying any convincing inner turmoil.
For a low stakes romance, The Photograph is a very pretty picture.
