Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

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Drawn This Way

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The Bad Guys 2

by Hope Madden

Nothing promises irresistible fun like a heist movie. That, plus a remarkable voice cast, elevated 2022’s animated adventure The Bad Guys above its sometimes convoluted writing.

Well, those bad guys gone good—Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina)—get sucked into one more heist in The Bad Guys 2.

The team of, let’s be honest, felons is having a tough time finding work since they served their time. And these copycat crimes are only making it harder for them to be accepted back into normal life. Well, a little blackmail and suddenly it looks like maybe the bad guys turned good guys might turn bad guys for the good of the planet, or maybe just turn back guys again for good.

As delightful as the sequel is, the plot is often as cumbersome and complicated as that last sentence.

The voice cast continues to be on point, though, strengthened by additions Danielle Brooks and Natasha Lyonne, who has a voice for animation as perfect to the task as Awkwafina’s. There are sly references, including a fun Silence of the Lambs sequence, plus Colin Jost playing a guy marrying out of his league.

The kids in my screening were mostly delighted, although the sheer volume of kissing made a nearby 9-year-old audibly upset. (Three smooches, and it was the third that seemed to just be too much.) But the romantic side plots are as adorable as the film’s focus on supportive friendship is sweet. (The redistribution of wealth angle is worth a smile as well.)

The snappy visual aesthetic and mischievous energy perfectly suit this cast, and the film feels like a fun and intriguing steppingstone for a franchise or TV series. It’s smarter than it looks and goofier than it needs to be. We’re in too short a supply of both of those things, so I’m happy to report that The Bad Guys 2 delivers the goods.

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Cloudburst

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Cloud

by Hope Madden

The films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa distinguish themselves with a sense of human dread in a larger, inhuman, often digital landscape. They unsettle with notions of something or someone beyond that organic veil able to exact harm. Sometimes the realm is more unworldly than digital, but the result is often the same: there is something out there, and it might even be us, but it’s not good.

The third of the filmmaker’s 2024 features, Cloud, makes its way to American screens this weekend. Riffing on the same idea, Kurosawa follows Yoshii (Masaki Suda), an online reseller who’s made some enemies.

The detached young man goes through his day nabbing and reselling bulk items—knock off designer bags, “therapy machines”, defective espresso makers—while quietly impressing at his day job in the factory. But once his manager pegs him as leadership material, Yoshii quits, uproots his spendy girlfriend (Kotone Furukawa), and leaves Tokyo for someplace a little roomier and more isolated.

Because there are signs that Yoshii should probably not let his true whereabouts known to his buyers.

Kurosawa sews together pieces of a mystery in what feels more like a character study for about two thirds of the film’s running time. An assortment of oddballs orbit Yoshii, but his gravitational pull is never entirely clear until the filmmaker takes a wild turn in Act 3.

The result feels like two separate movies, one meditative and mysterious, the other, slaphappy and frenetic. And while they don’t pair especially naturally, the fun of the final act makes up for the tonal stumble.

Kurosawa’s pervading themes of loneliness and disconnectedness in a connected world take on an almost satirical edge in Cloud. As forces close in on Yoshii, his own personality becomes less and less evident while those around him take on comedically odd characters. Rather than elegant melancholy, Cloud devolves merrily into sloppy chaos. And it’s a blast.

This may not be the film he’s remembered for, but we already have so many of those (Pulse and Cure, obviously, but so many more!). Still, for a step outside the expected and an unexpected burst of giddy, messy violence, Cloud shouldn’t be forgotten.

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Paint It Black

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Sketch

by Hope Madden

When I was 10, I wrote and directed a school play. In it, a babysitter and her charges are murdered by a roving madman. I got in a lot of trouble.

Young Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle) knows my pain. To the dismay of her out-of-his depth dad (Tony Hale) and protective if clueless brother Jack (Kue Lawrence), Amber draws scary monsters capable of murder. Mainly they murder Bowman (Kalon Cox), the b-hole from the school bus who is on Amber’s last nerve. But with their teeth, tentacles, hook feet, and sword arms, they could murder anybody.

Could they? We’ll, we’re set to find out when Amber Wyatt’s sketchbook makes its way into a magical little pond and all her beasties come to life.

Writer/director Seth Worley’s Sketch is the latest Angel Studios release, but don’t hold that against it. Yes, that’s the studio responsible for the irresponsible, illogical, and terribly acted Sound of Freedom and a host of other mediocre-to-awful inspirational films. Still, Sketch is a charmer, family-friendly but unafraid, forgiving and funny.

The message is clear but not too blunt: stop freaking out about the kids who are examining their pain. Worry more about the people who are silencing theirs. Part of the reason the themes resonate without wallowing is the banter between the always reliable Hale and D’Arcy Carden, as his sister.

Belle struggles from time to time with the heaviness of the character, but both Lawrence and Cox deliver silly fun as a couple of dumbasses out to save their town from day-glo chalk monsters belching glitter.

Worley’s writing is on point, rarely (though occasionally) drifting into maudlin territory. But even at its weakest, the script benefits from Carden’s crisp comic turn and Hale’s effortlessly empathetic pathos.

Plus, the imagination that is celebrated onscreen with macabre whimsy articulates a kind of acceptance rarely emphasized in films that begin with a teacher worrying a parent over creepy kid drawings.

There’s a lot beneath the film’s surface that feels too familiar, but a game cast and directorial commitment to childish creativity elevate Sketch. It’s a good one to watch with your kids. Even better if you’re kind of afraid of your kids.

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So Happy

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Together

by Hope Madden

Horror has always trodden the terror of losing your identity, of losing your very personality or individuality, of what makes you you. From Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to every Invasion of the Body Snatchers iteration (including The Faculty) to most zombie horror, horror fiction and cinema reflect our own worry that there is something out there that will steal from us what makes us ourselves and turn us into something else.

The anxiety of losing your identity to coupledom is just as real, though few films (horror or otherwise) have depicted this relatable, perhaps primal fear as adorably, as authentically, or as grotesquely as Michael Shanks’s Together.

The writer/director’s feature debut benefits enormously from the lived-in camaraderie of its leads. Alison Brie and Dave Franco, married in real life, play Millie and Tim. They’ve been together for nearly a decade, but this new chapter of their lives marks a distinct step. Millie took a job teaching in Upstate New York, two hours from NYC where Tim sometimes plays guitar with a band while he tries to finish his solo EP, to be self-released.

Millie has grown up. Will Tim? Can he? Or is he abandoning himself, giving up on his dreams and forgetting who he is by moving with Millie? If they don’t split up now, it’ll just be harder later.

Much, much harder. Stickier too.

Something happens as the pair explore the woods around their new home and, little by little, it draws their two bodies together, attempting to fuse them into one thing. It’s a delightful metaphor played joyously and goretastically, the body horror and humor fusing just as readily as Tim and Millie’s extremities.

Brie and Franco are perfect, and Damon Herriman lends his considerable, understated talent to develop the plot and keep you guessing.

Though Shank’s writing sometimes lands heavily (past trauma exposition), and other times leaves you disbelieving (why on earth is she still with him?!), the sweet, romantic believability of the performances charms you into sticking it out. And you’ll be glad, because once the film hits its stride, it is a wild, funny, charming, repulsive ride.

What Shanks manages with his film is to be overtly romantic, never cynical, consistently funny, and gross as hell. It’s the perfect date movie. But maybe go on an empty stomach.

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Baby Steps

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps

by Hope Madden

Wholesome is the new look in superheroes. Just a couple weeks back, James Gunn and Superman made kindness punk rock. And now, director Matt Shakman hopes to draw on a retro-futuristic vibe to conjure a less skeptical, cynical time.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps owes much of its entertainment value to production design. The 1960s of the future is as quaint as can be, but the vibe is never played for laughs at the expense of its innocence.

And sure, villainy is forever afoot, but for Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), nothing is as scary as new parenting. For the first time, Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards is facing the fact that he knows nothing about anything (as all new parents must).

But he’d better get over it because world eater Galactus (Ralph Ineson, in great voice) is headed to earth, as heralded by one silver surfer (Julia Garner). Does Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) have a crush? Sure, but so does The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), thanks to that kindly teacher over at the neighborhood Hebrew school (Natasha Lyonne, donning her own inimitable retro-future style).

Shakman helms his first feature in over a decade, after slugging it out on a slate of successful TV series, including helming 9 episodes of WandaVision. Though he nails the visual vibe, set pieces and action sequences entertain more than wow.

The wholesome family speechifying gets a little tiresome eventually, as well. But the earnest, heartfelt messaging—no cynicism, no snark, no ironic detachment—feels not only welcome but fearless. Performances are no less sincere, each actor carving out camaraderie and backstory the film refuses to telegraph.

Pascal, as a genius almost enslaved by his calculating brain, effortlessly mines the character for conflicted tenderness, so believably submissive to this new love. Both Moss-Bachrach and Quinn, in supporting roles, craft memorable, vulnerable characters.

Kirby impresses. Saddled heavily by the cinematic tropes of protective motherhood and indefatigable maternal instinct, she edges Sue’s conflict with flashes of rage and ferocity that not only support the plot but give life to the character.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is no Superman. But it’s fun. It’s wholesome. It’s swell.

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Found and Lost

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House on Eden

by Hope Madden

Can you watch a found footage horror film and not be constantly asking yourself, who edited this footage together? Who pulled from one camera, then another, spliced in security cam stuff? Who looked at all the footage from all the different cameras and decided what we would see when? And how did they get it all? And where did they go?

If it does not bother you, then it’s possible that you will enjoy writer/director Kris Collins’s House on Eden more than I did.

This found footage horror clings close to real life. Spooky content creators “KallMeKris” Collins, “celinaspookyboo” Celina Myers, and filmmaker Jason-Christopher Mayer play versions of themselves, social media handles and all. The trio is out to make a great video, not one of those boring videos everyone makes. So instead of going to the cemetery Celina has researched, Kris diverts the road trip to a house she found online that she’s sure no one has ever been to.

Sure. Because totally anonymous houses post themselves online.

And what’s the draw? Why is it spooky? Because maybe a girl went missing somewhere in the vicinity 60 years ago.

For context, wherever you are standing at this very second, some girl has gone missing from that spot in the last sixty years.

So, three youngsters break and enter into a beautiful, well-maintained home, not a speck of dust anywhere. But it’s really, really far away from everything else so surely, it must be abandoned.

That is to say, three people break into a well cared for, isolated home to unravel no mystery they know of in one of the more tedious, uninspired, lazily written found footage horror films in recent memory.

It’s not as if found footage can’t be done well, even the ghosthunter variety. Deadstream is epically watchable, funny and scary at the same time, and it maintains the integrity of found footage pretty well. My advice to you is to watch that instead.

Shudder Premiere

Sea Creature in Paradise

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Monster Island

by Hope Madden

Thanks in part to the success of Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 Prey, period piece creature features have come into vogue. Nice!

Writer/director Mike Wiluan’s Monster Island (originally titled Orang Ikan) is the latest. In a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” two men—a Japanese traitor (Dean Fujioka) and a British POW (Callum Woodhouse)—are shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific. That chain that binds them together at the ankle is not the biggest obstacle to their survival. Certainly not the toothiest. 

Neither man speaks the other’s language, which is another hurdle Wiluan uses wisely. Thanks to subtitles, we know what each man says, and the moments when they don’t understand each other offer more about the story Monster Island is telling than the action ever could.

That’s not to disrespect the action. This is a nicely edited b-movie, cut to create the most tumult and action possible given the circumstance (meaning, the budget and the big rubber suit).

And while some of the early shipboard explosion footage is clearly (and not very convincingly) created digitally, the monster is not. That’s a benefit and a curse. It’s not to say Orang Ikan, the name given to the big island beastie by an unlucky castaway, looks bad. It just looks a little bit borrowed, sort of Predator meets Rawhead Rex (that underbite!) meets Creature from the Black Lagoon. In terms of screentime, less would probably have been more.

But both Fujioka and Woodhouse are so fully committed to their characters—an introvert haunted by his decisions and a punch-first-think-later Englishman—that the blossoming bromance makes up for whatever originality Orang Ikan lacks.

We spend 75% of the films brisk run time with just those three characters. In lesser hands, that could become tedious. But Wiluan and his dedicated trio deliver action and fun.

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Not-So-Way-Back Machine

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Eddington

by Hope Madden

There are very few contemporary filmmakers better able to pick scabs, to generate discomfort for an entire running time, than Ari Aster.

Eddington, his latest, is an inverted Western set in late May of 2020—you remember spring of 2020, don’t you? The lunacy. The terror. The relentless need to move from one day to the next as if we were not actively sniffing the apocalypse. Well, Aster sure remembers it.

In a lot of ways, Eddington, New Mexico resembles just about any place in the spring of 2020. An awful lot of people wanted to ignore the pandemic because it hadn’t touched their town (yet, that they knew of). Others wanted to follow the rules as closely as was convenient, hoping that business as usual would find a way. Others spiraled, whether from terror or boredom or lack of structure, often turning to the internet, many to finally realize that police brutality was a real thing.

Aster captures it all, depicting the way the façade of normalcy had protected us from ourselves and each other, and reminds us that nothing healthy grows on stolen land.

Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) just wants things to go back to the way they were. He sees the disdain, fear, maybe even hate people like him—white, unmasked men—are facing. It is disconcerting—Aster’s hint that the underlying cause of all the harm, hatred, violence, and mayhem that came from the pandemic might have less to do with Covid 19 and more with white men feeling their true vulnerability.

Phoenix is characteristically flawless—flummoxed and human in a way that engenders more empathy than Joe likely deserves. Joe’s counterpoint, the smooth, opportunistic mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), doesn’t get off any easier, and Pascal’s slightly brittle performance is enlightening.

Aster populates Eddington with a collection of the exact types of people forged by the pandemic, though many are boiled down to defining lines of dialogue (“I am a privileged white male, and I’m here to listen! And I’ll do that as soon as I’m done with this speech.”) Still, with supporting performers as strong as Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Michael Ward, and Dierdre O’Connell, even the most faintly drawn character is fascinating.

Aster’s film blames humanity, not right or left, for the cultural rot we’re left with. That may be the most honest and aggravating choice he makes, but Eddington offers very little in the way of fabrication. The town may be fictional, but I think we all remember the place.