Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

New In Theaters

How’s Your Bodice? Ripped?

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“Wuthering Heights”

by Hope Madden

Remember when people saw the teaser trailer for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” and lost their minds? Everybody assumed Fennell had gotten in there and gone all Saltburn on the classic.

She sure did. Boy howdy, did she.

But let’s be honest, it’s a weird book about meanness and obsession and borderline incest and then outright incest. Plus, if you want a tame version there are about 100 other adaptations you can find. Let Fennell be Fennell.

Because she does it so well!

The film is gorgeous, and I don’t just mean the cast. Although there’s that. Margot Robbie is truly excellent as Cathy, spoiled and vulnerable and cruel and selfish to the core but consistently cheery about it.

And who smolders as well as Jacob Elordi? As Heathcliff, he’s first a scruffy, sad boy full of longing and later, a handsome sad man full of longing. This is absolutely Robbie’s show, but he offers very solid support and their chemistry is undeniable.

Hong Chau, fantastic as always, brings some bite and depth to a character who’s often a bit of a martyred throwaway. Likewise, Alison Oliver is a wild surprise as Isabella.

Fennell, credited with the screenplay, streamlines Emily Brontë’s epic, losing and combining characters wisely and essentially ending the film at the book’s halfway point. It feels very much like the story a teenage girl might have wished Brontë had written, but Fennell has the talent and the cast to make a really good movie out of what is essentially fan fiction.

The result is a dazzling, horny sight to see. The costumes, set design, framing, photography—all of it delivers a lush spectacle of the kind we now expect from the Saltburn director.

Wuthering Heights purists might scoff and Emily Brontë might blush, but for the rest of us, it’s hard to be mad at Emerald Fennell’s latest confection.

New In Theaters

Game Over

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The Mortuary Assistant

by Hope Madden

Director Jeremiah Kipp hits the exact right tone as he opens his latest feature, The Mortuary Assistant. Based on the popular video game, the film follows Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland) through her first night on her own at the mortuary.

Before she can fly unaccompanied, she completes her first solo autopsy, as the mortician (Paul Sparks) watches. The scenes are clinical, filmed in close-up, Kipp manufacturing the best combination of mundane and macabre.

Soon enough, Rebecca will begin her first overnight shift, and the clients are not your run of the mill cadavers.

Kipp, working from a script by Tracee Beebe, finds organic ways to give Rebecca a backstory. Flashbacks are not intrusive until they need to be, as the film warps that history into another way to really ruin Rebecca’s first night on the job.

John Adams figures into Rebecca’s past. He’s a perfect choice for a loving dad and for what that pesky demon haunting the mortuary has planned for her.

Holland’s great in a tough role. Rebecca carries probably 90% of the film, much of that screentime spent alone or with a lifeless (?) corpse. It’s an internal character, not an extrovert or the type who talks to herself, and the actor impresses, commanding attention and driving action.

Bebee’s script adds some depth to the game storyline as well, using Rebecca’s backstory to develop a theme of addiction that suits the horror and helps to explain Rebecca’s connection to events.

Sparks delivers an enjoyable performance, stiff and weird as you might expect from a mortician, certainly from this particular mortician. Supporting turns from the small ensemble (Keena Ferguson Frasier and Emily Bennett, in particular) elevate emotion, whether that emotion is heartbreak, fear, or revulsion.

Plus that demon is freaky.

Frequent gamers may be able to make more sense of the actual mythology—possession, demonic bindings, the minutia of morgue work. Still, The Mortuary Assistant transcends the issues that usually plague big screen game adaptations and delivers fun, creepy demonic horror.

New In Theaters

Let’s Do the Time Loop Again

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Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

by Hope Madden

Say Sam Rockwell, ragged clothes under homemade explosives and draped in clear plastic, walks into the late-night diner where you’re eating and claims to be from the future. I mean, if anybody’s going to do it, it’ll be Sam Rockwell.

The reliably loose cannon stars in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, director Gore Verbinski’s first film since 2016’s regrettable A Cure for Wellness. The sci-fi time loop fantasy sees Rockwell as a man on a mission: find the little boy whose AI is going to destroy the world and keep him from finishing it. But it will take the perfect mix of people to help him, and he knows those people are here, in this diner, on this night.

He knows about certain groupings that are not the saviors because he’s tried this exact thing many times already. Many, many times. But he’s got a weird feeling about tonight’s recruits: an unhappily married teacher couple (Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña), a mousy woman sitting alone (Juno Temple), a woman who just wanted to relax with some pie (Georgia Goodman), a tough guy (Asim Chaudhry), and a Goth princess (Haley Lu Richardson).

Matthew Robinson’s script spins each recruit’s backstory with its own little chapter—because chapters are a really popular cinematic device right now—gives us not only a bit of intel on the character, but also some context.

Robinson’s greatest achievement is the alarming mix of gallows humor and rainbow colored confetti. His characters race against the clock, video game like, to beat level after level of difficulties before finally entering the final layer—well, Sam’s never made it this far, so who knows what’s in there?

And don’t start guessing because that basically guarantees the form of your doom. At least don’t think about Mr. Sta Puft.

Speaking of Bill Murray, the film owes as much to Groundhog Day as it does Terminator, and that’s a heady mix. The imaginative side plots and character arcs feel wild and random, but the script is actually built quite solidly.

And the theme—that AI cannot help but ruin human existence—may not be new, but it’s truer than ever. Thankfully, Verbinski, along with his game cast and writer, recognizes the bitter, cynical  humor in the fact that this hero is probably already too late. But hey, at least he can blow himself up and start over.

New In Theaters

Lips Together and Blow

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Whistle

by Hope Madden

Wish Upon. Polaroid. Talk to Me. Ouija. Choose or Die. The “gang of youngsters stumble across a cursed object to everyone’s peril” subgenre is alive and thriving.

But hey, Talk to Me was good.

Corin Hardy’s Whistle isn’t particularly good. It is incredibly formulaic, with mainly one-dimensional characters forever making unlikely choices because the plot requires that they do. It’s shot quite well, though.

Dafne Keen (Logan) just moved in with her cousin after some terrible mishaps. Her first day in the new high school, she opens her locker—vacated by a basketball star who inexplicably died recently—and finds some kind of creepy, ancient looking skull whistle.

Any number of ridiculous contrivances later, and a group of high school cliches—the burnout (Keen), the smart girl (Sophie Nélisse), the drunken asshole jock (Jhaleil Swaby), his hot girlfriend (Ali Skovbye), and the comic book nerd (Sky Yang)—have to battle death as conjured by that creepy whistle.

Yes, writer Owen Egerton mashes some Final Destination whatnot in with the other familiar beats. Don’t expect that franchise’s Rube Goldberg style kills, but Hardy does bring some blood and gore, as promised by that R rating.

The curse itself does feel somewhat fresh. The death stalking each victim is their own natural death, just come early. Why their own death would want to creep around, chasing and terrifying their still-alive selves for days beforehand is a bit of a mystery.

Percy Hynes White stands out as a new twist on the neighborhood drug dealer, and Nick Frost is fun as a teacher who likes to hand out detentions. Truthfully, most of the cast does solid work, impressive given the uninspired script. James is particularly hamstrung with the most boilerplate character among them.

Keen struggles, too, delivering a one-note melancholy character that never feels authentic.

There is fun to be had here and there, especially at the Harvest Festival. One basketball player goes in costume as Teen Wolf without mention, and another unnamed werewolf character is a treat. The whole festival setting is filmed beautifully and reminds you that Hardy has some skill.

Not enough to elevate this script to something worth watching, though.

New In Theaters

Bloodless

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Dracula

by Hope Madden

There are those who would call Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula a masterpiece. The score is undeniable, the costuming and set design glorious, the use of shadow, the creature design, the pulsing sensuality, Gary Oldman—all of it is exquisite. The entire balance of the ensemble? Terrible. There, I said it.

Still, it’s a memorable take—for many, a beloved all-timer—on Stoker’s vampire classic. I will assume that French filmmaker Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) is a fan. While his Dracula delivers much in the way of new ideas, the source material for his script is less Stoker’s novel than Coppola’s film.

He’s not hiding it. He even borrows—homages—bits and pieces of Wojciech Kilar’s score.

Caleb Landry Jones is Vlad the Second, Count Dracul. He loves his wife, Elizabeta (Zoë Bleu). He fights the Crusades to eradicate Muslims for God. But God does not protect his Elizabeta, so he curses God and searches the endless centuries, hoping for his loves return.

This storyline is 100% Coppola, not in the novel at all. Landry Jones is a talented actor, and versatile. See Nitram. But his performances tend to be somewhat interior, and you cannot help but compare his anguish over Elisabeta with Oldman’s in the ’92 film. Landry Jones comes up short.

And though Besson manages one pretty impressive wide shot of the Vlad armies, the earth burning behind them, nothing can compare to the macabre puppet masterpiece Coppola brought to the same scene.

But, after Act 1, the film settles into some new territory. France! No Renfield, no Van Helsing, no fight for Lucy’s hand, no Demeter. Christoph Waltz (a little bit autopilot here) is a priest whose order has been tracking vampires for 400 years. With this storyline, Besson, who wrote the script, forges some new ideas. Newish. And Matilda De Angelis is a particular joy as Dracula’s helper.  

Fresh ideas aside, Besson doesn’t bring much Besson to the film. There’s too little action here, and most of it is carried out by little CGI gargoyles, more comedic than thrilling. One scene doesn’t naturally lead to the next, characters feel disconnected to the plot, and, worst of all, it’s very talky and a bit dull. I’d call it a fanciful period piece before I called it horror.

It’s OK to borrow. What’s hard is to come up with anything original, because no fictional character has been on screen more often in the history of film than Dracula. Even Jesus hasn’t been depicted as often in film. So, it’s fine to borrow as long as you can do something new to merit another go. Besson just about accomplishes that. Just about.

Outtakes

Role Reversal

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Untitled Home Invasion Romance

by Hope Madden

Jason Statham is doing what Jason Statham does in a new thriller hitting screens this week. But did you know that Jason Biggs, known mainly for being a likeable dork who makes bad decisions, is doing just that as well this week?

Actually, with his latest film Untitled Home Invasion Romance, Biggs does stretch a new muscle. The American Pie star directs. It’s his first go behind the camera and, much thanks to a game cast and a surprisingly dark script from Joshua Paul Johnson and Jamie Napoli, he delivers an unexpected delight.

Biggs plays Kevin, an actor known best for his role in erectile dysfunction treatment ads. But Mr. Softy has decided to play rough. Just play, though. In an attempt to win back his wife (Meaghan Rath), he’s planned a weekend getaway where another actor (Arturo Castro) will pretend to break into the house, giving Kevin the opportunity to play the hero and win back Suzie’s love.

It backfires, obviously. And indeed, the set-up is so obvious you may be tempted to give up on Untitled Home Invasion Romance. I was. But stick it out, because not only does the film get zanier by the minute, but Biggs manages an impressive feat of tone, humor, and sly feminism.

Rath delivers nuanced comedy with a restrained but important physical performance. The action in the film is big and showy, but the comedy is a bit more low key. Micro, even, like the micro-aggressions both Suzie and police chief Heather (Anna Konkle) tolerate from the men around them who insist on taking care of things.

At a certain point, the underlying comedy of sexual politics takes over the larger-than-life home invasion plotline, but Biggs and cast have done such a wonderful job of charming and alarming that it feels both wildly out of place and exactly necessary.

A comedy this likeable and smiley, that’s simultaneously twisted and dark is tough to come by. Because a lot of people meet grisly ends, and most of them are actually pretty nice. Not the lawyer, though. Screw that guy.

Credit Biggs for stretching. Not the performance—Kevin is, to the letter, your garden variety Jason Biggs character. But the director knows how to wring a little something different out of his work.

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Rainbow Connection

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Arco

by Hope Madden

A child who can’t wait to grow up goes against his parents’ wishes and stumbles head long into a dangerous adventure. Between the family-film formula for its plot and the hand-drawn animation, Ugo Bienvenu and Gilles Cazaux’s Oscar nominated Arco feels like it comes from another time. And that’s a lot of its charm, because the retro-futuristic vibe balances a delightful vintage SciFi quality with a disconcerting reality.

Arco (voice in English by Juliano Valdo, in French by Oscar Tresanini) is a boy from the distant future who, sort of accidentally, travels back in time to 2075 where he crash lands in the life of a lonely little girl named Iris (Romy Fay/Margot Ringard Oldra).

With her parents working in the city, joining by hologram for dinners and bedtime, Iris spends most of her time with a nanny robot named Mikki, and a toddler brother named Peter. But Arco shakes up her world, offering connection and companionship she’s been missing. Together, they’ll figure out how to get him back to his time before it’s too late.

Again, the premise itself is not that unusual. It’s essentially E.T.   

Bienvenu, writing with Félix de Givry, livens up the story with the loony humor of a bumbling threesome bent on finding the rainbow boy. They’d seen a boy just like him as children, and nobody believed them. Now they want proof.

The bowl cuts and rainbow sunglasses mark the characters—voiced in English by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea—as harmless goofballs, but they serve more purpose than simply comic relief.

The miracle the filmmakers conjure with Arco is that the childlike wonder of the characters, the wholesome storyline, and the beautiful animation belie the absolute bleakness of the film’s context. The world around Iris is literally on fire, a danger that Bienvenu illustrates with lush ferocity and amplifies with a daring, feverishly paced third act.

Those two worlds—hopeful wonder and bleak reality—inevitably collide, and though Act 3 resolves as you likely expect it to, it taps into the bittersweet emotion and timeless hope that marks all great family films.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee & More

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On this week’s Screening Room podcast, Hope & George review Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee, H Is for Hawk, Magellan, and Mother of Flies.

New In Theaters

Point of No Return

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Return to Silent Hill

by Hope Madden

When I used to pick my son up from his dorm, invariably there was a video game on whether anyone was playing or not. Mainly it was badly articulated characters delivering stilted, unrealistic but wildly dramatic dialog on an endless loop because, with no one playing, there was no action.

I could also be describing Christophe Gans’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel, Return to Silent Hill.

I did not care for the filmmaker’s 2006 Silent Hill, a film that followed a mother into a supernatural town to save her adopted daughter. The sequel, also based on the incredibly popular video game of the same name, follows a distraught man (James Sunderland) who returns to a supernatural town to save his girlfriend (Hannah Emily Anderson).

Gans’s original at least boasted Radha Mitchell, who can, in fact, act. Gans didn’t give her much opportunity, but she tried. Do not look for that here. Though it doesn’t seem that acting is what Gans is after. He lights and frames actors specifically to make them seem less fleshy, less human. Their movement is stiff and unnatural, their dialog stilted and dumb. You truly feel like you’re watching a video game you’re not playing. Nobody’s playing.

You would hope that in the 20 years between projects, the creature design would have improved. Not the case. You rarely get a good eyeball on any of the creatures—and the video game does have a slew of creepy beasties to choose from—and when you do see them, they’re bland and they do nothing.

Because nothing happens in this movie. The entire film feels like being trapped in the between action set ups of a video game that nobody is playing. Nothing happens. There is no action.

Somebody thought the storyline, sans shootouts, without monster carnage, just the storyline of a video game was interesting enough to make a movie out of. They were incorrect.