It was so cool to get to host the Columbus premier of the new Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk! We’re grateful to the great crowd at Gateway Film Center for joining us for the screening and for sticking around for a spoiler-free chat about the movie.
by Hope Madden
Like 2021’s Poser, Noah Dixon and Ori Segev’s thriller of fandom gone feral, writer/director Alex Russell’s Lurker hangs on the cringey relatability of its awestruck lead. Who hasn’t dreamed of being taken into their hero’s inner circle?
Théodore Pellerin is Matthew. Working in a hip LA clothier, Matthew meets rising pop phenom Oliver (Archie Madekwe, Saltburn, Gran Turismo). Quietly, expertly, Matthew manipulates the situation to become the opposite of what he really is: sincere, oblivious to Oliver’s fame, an outsider with taste. Smitten, Oliver invites Matthew to a show.
What follows is a series of steps in Matthew’s budding friendship with the emotionally unfaithful Oliver. Russell never overplays the sleights of hand, the seeds sown, as Matthew the opportunist situates himself within Oliver’s posse.
Russell’s nimble screenplay delivers something sharp, bright, and delightfully morally murky. Though Matthew possesses a dorky, humble charm, we recognize his deception the moment he meets Oliver, so we’re never expected to fully empathize with or root for him.
At the same time, Oliver’s fickle affection makes him hard to pity. The whole entourage swirls with narcissism and insecurity. There’s something a touch Shakespearean about the drama that gives it a timeless quality, while its situation within the “attention as currency” climate lends it immediacy and relevance.
Madekwe is the perfect blend of charm, arrogance, insincerity and vulnerability. His character arc is wild, but the actor never misses a step.
Pellerin delivers a subtly unnerving performance, endearing one moment, volatile the next. The anxiety seething just below Matthew’s smiling surface informs an insecurity that recognizes itself in Oliver. It’s here that Russell’s perceptive screenplay does the most psychological damage, fully separating Lurker from other poisonous fan films.
It’s a quietly effecting study of the way the desire for fame alienates and isolates, whether you’ve achieved some level of fame or you’re happy to siphon it from someone else. Russell’s direction and his cast keep you anxious and keep you guessing.
by Hope Madden
Hollywood is one big nightmare. That’s essentially the plot of writer/director Rachel Cain’s feature debut, a dreamscape where you’re never certain what Gemma (Chloë Levin) is experiencing and what she’s imagining.
Levine’s cinematic presence, no matter the film, is wholly natural, utterly authentic. There’s nothing uncanny about her. Her humanity and vulnerability inform every moment she’s onscreen. That may be why she’s such a perfect central figure in horror films like The Ranger, The Transfiguration, and The Sacrifice Game. However unnatural the plot or nemesis, Levine is a profoundly human anchor.
In this surreal Hollywood fable—part Neon Demon, part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, part Inception, part The Substance—Gemma leaves a small town in Georgia to chase her Hollywood dreams. Lonesome, rejected, lost and always one step away from homelessness and failure, she takes a job at an experimental sleep clinic where people dream their way into believing they can achieve their ideal future.
Gamma works nights, studying scripts and babysitting sleeping clients. By day she auditions, faces rejection, daydreams about her old life, and flirts with the possibly creepy, possibly benevolent Hollywood insider, Brooks (Jonathan Schaech).
But the daydreams are leaking into her waking moments, huge chunks of time keep disappearing, and there’s this contorted figure with a twisted spine she keeps catching in her peripheral vision.
Cain’s script lacks a little something in originality—hers is hardly the first cautionary tale about striking it out on your own in Hollywood. Still, in subverting the idea of big dreams, playing with the notion that perception is reality, and mining the vulnerability and predatory nature of those with and without power in Tinsel Town, she hits a nerve.
She leaves too much unresolved, which is frustrating. But scene by scene, Cain casts a spell both horrifying and hopeful. Though the entire ensemble is strong, Levine is her secret weapon. The film falls apart if you don’t feel protective of Gemma, if you don’t long for her to succeed. Characteristically, Levine has you in her corner, even when lurking doom waits behind her in the shadows.
by Hope Madden
Watching the trailer for the new Austin Butler actioner Caught Stealing, it’s easy to forget it’s a Darren Aronofsky film. Yes, the guy who swung from Requiem for a Dream to Noah has an interest in varied material, but a zany, sexy, urban action romp? None of those words feel right for an Aronofsky.
Fitting, because that’s not at all what Caught Stealing is. Based on the Charlie Huston novel, the film trails a good-looking, well-intentioned New York alcoholic named Hank (Butler). Hank sometimes looks after his punk rock neighbor Russ’s (Matt Smith) cat, and Russ has to rush back to London on account of his dad’s stroke. In his rush, Russ seems to have forgotten that a whole bunch of very bad people are looking for something he has, and they assume Hank knows where to find it.
Yes, that does sound like it could be sexy and zany. The wild bunch that populates the tale—Hank’s girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), his hard rockin’ hippie boss (Griffin Dunne), the Russians (Nikita Kukushkin and Yuri Kolokolnikov), the Hebrews (Liev Schrieber and Vincent D’Onofrio), and the cop (Regina King)—certainly carry a madcap vibe. But the film turns on a dime with an act of shocking violence, and Aronofsky reminds us again that we’re never fully safe in his hands.
It could feel like a mismatch—the hyper serious, even sometimes punishing auteur helming a glossy mistaken identity action thriller. It’s not. It’s probably the best thing that could have happened to the property.
It’s fun to see Aronofsky—who scarred us so deeply with Requiem, and Black Swan, and The Wrestler, let’s not even talk about Mother!—cut loose a little bit. Laugh. Shoot some people.
But we never really lose him. His camera is trained on all the details a more glamorous version of the film might skim over: the blood and urine pooling under Hank after his first beating., for instance. Who but Aronofsky would have chosen to film Hank’s drunken, projectile vomit from the point of view of the window it slaps against?
It also helps that the hijinks are driven by such remarkable talent. Smith and Dunne are both a riot, and King toes the line between comic foil and badass like the professional she is.
The depth and the darkness, the broken humanity and festering shame, those are the themes that might surprise folks looking for the new Austin Butler blockbuster. They’re lucky.
by Hope Madden
At 19, Mckenna Grace has racked up 71 TV and film acting credits, with 11 more movies currently in post-production. That’s insane. Naturally not every project was a winner. But from her earliest film work, like Marc Webb’s 2017 drama Gifted, Grace’s control and authenticity make her memorable, even when the projects are not.
Writer/director Dan Kay’s streamer What We Hide benefits immeasurably from Grace’s presence. She plays Spider, 15-year-old daughter of an addict. With her younger sister Jessie (Jojo Regina), Spider discovers the overdosed corpse of her mother in the opening moments of the film.
Recognizing that foster care would almost certainly mean splitting her from her sister, Spider decides to hide the body and say nothing. Now all the girls have to do is steer clear of their mom’s volatile dealer (Dacre Montgomery), the town’s goodhearted sheriff (Jesse Williams), and the latest case worker, whom they not-so-affectionately call “Baby Thief” (Tamara Austin).
Grace is terrific, and the chemistry she shares with Regina buoys some otherwise clunky dialog. The cast around them does admirable work with even more obvious characters. The always welcome Forrest Goodluck (Revenant, Blood Quantum, How to Blow Up a Pipeline) carries love interest Cody with a naturalism that gives his scenes an indie vibe that comes close to offsetting the after school special tenor delivered by the rest of the effort.
Commendable performances from a solid cast don’t make up for Kay’s uninspired direction. Bland framing marries banal plotting to leech some of the vibrance this cast injects into scenes.
It doesn’t help that the story veers so rarely from the obvious that the occasional flash of originality—the couple from the motel, the case worker’s phone calls—stand out as opportunities left unexplored.
Had Kay been able to situate his tale from the opioid epidemic in a recognizable place, given the community some personality, or found a less by-the-book way to complicate What We Hide, he might have had something. Instead, the film is a well-intentioned waste of a good cast.
by Hope Madden
My friend has photographed Lloyd Kaufman’s testicles. That means that in a game of Six Degrees of Lloyd Kaufman’s Testicles, I would win.
In other news, a bunch of talented, funny humans have rebooted Kaufman’s iconic 1984 Troma classic, The Toxic Avenger. There are few films I have more impatiently anticipated than this, plagued as it was by a two-year delay in distribution. But now you can see writer/director Macon Blair’s reboot in all its goopy, corrosive, violent, hilarious glory.
Though the story’s changed, much remains the same (including Easter eggs a plenty!).
Winston (Peter Dinklage), single stepfather to Wade (Jacob Tremblay) and janitor at a factory that makes wellness and beauty supplements, finds that he’s dying and his platinum insurance doesn’t cover the treatment that could save his life. Attempting to steal the money to cover the treatment, he saves a whistleblower (Taylour Paige) from a group of horror core hip hop parkour assassins but winds up in a pool of toxic sludge.
Let’s pause for a second to marvel at this cast. Dinklage is one of the most talented actors working today, and as Winston he is effortlessly heartbreaking and tender. He’s also really funny, and this is not necessarily the kind of humor every serious actor can pull off.
Paige, who has impressed in Zola and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, among other film, also seems built for Blair’s particular brand of Troma comedy. And Tremblay, beloved since his excruciatingly perfect turn in Room as a small boy, gives the film its angsty heartbeat.
Plus, Kevin Bacon as the narcissistic weasel owner of the wellness and beauty empire killing the planet. He hates to be called Bozo (IYKYK).
Blair made his directorial debut with 2017’s underseen treasure, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, though he’s better known as the lynchpin performer in many of Jeremy Saulnier’s films (Blue Ruin, Green Room, Murder Party). He and Kaufman both deliver laughs in small roles, but he impresses most as the mind behind the mayhem.
His vision for this film couldn’t be more spot-on. Joyous, silly, juvenile, insanely violent, hateful of the bully, in love with the underdog—Blair’s Toxic Avenger retains the best of Troma, rejects the worst, and crafts something delirious and wonderful.
by Hope Madden
An entertaining if slight thriller of the old school, hard-boiled detective sort, Honey Don’t! is director Ethan Coen’s follow up to 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls. The second in a lesbian B-movie trilogy, the film sees Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a modern day (if landline and analogue) private detective in sun drenched Bakersfield, CA.
Sometime before opening credits roll, Honey got a call from one Mia Novotny (Kara Peterson), the corpse in the overturned car down a dusty canyon road. So obviously, Honey’s not actually working that case. Still, Mia had called saying she was in danger, and business is kind of slow, so what could it hurt if Honey digs in a little bit?
What she finds is an incredibly corrupt minister (Chris Evans), a missing niece (Talia Ryder), a sexy cop (Aubre Plaza), a sexier French woman on a Vespa (Lera Abova), more bodies and more leads. But no real case to solve.
Writing again with Tricia Cooke, Coen has fun recasting a lot of the romantic, tough guy mythology of the private dick and Qualley carries herself and that mythology well. And while each supporting turn is, on its own, convincing and solid, few of the characters feel like they exist in the same film.
At turns punch drunk, zany, dark, gritty, absurd, and lighthearted, Honey Don’t! causes tone change whiplash.
The cinematic sleight of hand required of any whodunnit worth its salt works on the level that it’s a surprise, but again it delivers a tonal shift that brings the film to a screeching halt.
Suddenly the slapstick comedy, delivered with panache and color and elevating the pace of much of the movie, feels not just out of place but ill conceived. The fact that the more comedic the film the more violent the imagery also feels wildly at odds with the seriousness of the final act.
Qualley has no trouble click-clacking her heels no matter the scene or tone, and both Evans and Charlie Day, as a cop with a crush on Honey, are perfect in a breezy if violent comedy about oblivious men in a world where they are unnecessary. And certain scenes feel like the polished gem of any Coen Brothers film. But Honey Don’t! can’t string enough of these together to create anything lasting.
by Hope Madden
Remember how great Cleveland looked in Superman? Writer/director Shawn Simmons takes us back to The Land, as well as to Toledo, for his thriller set among Ohio’s low rent criminal underbelly, Eenie Meanie.
It’s not exactly as tourism friendly as Superman.
Samara Weaving is Edie, and when we meet her, she’s really struggling to make something of her life. A day job as a bank clerk, night classes, maxed out credit cards, bleary nights studying. And then her one mistake—she stops by to share some news with her ex, John (Karl Glusman, The Bikeriders, Watcher).
But John’s gotten himself into some trouble. And try as she might to leave him and his trouble behind, the semi-fatherly crime lord she used to work for (Andy Garcia, delightful) will kill John unless Edie saves him. And to do that, she falls back on some old skills as a getaway driver in a big score.
Simmons has crafted a fun, twisty, funny thriller full of sharp turns. Weaving effortlessly carries the film as the tenderhearted badass who knows better. Glusman is infuriatingly excellent as that epic dumbass you want to smack but can’t help but hug. And maybe also smack.
Solid support from Garcia, Steve Zahn, Mike O’Malley, and Randall Park fills every scene with laughs, pathos, violence, and fun. But it’s the sly way Simmons braids together tales of co-dependence, trauma, loyalty, and resilience that gives Eenie Meanie unexpected heft.
Weaving has proven her genre moxie again and again (Ready or Not, Mayhem, The Babysitter, Guns Akimbo, Azrael), so it comes as no surprise that she brings the goods as the lead in an action comedy thriller. What’s impressive is the honesty and the genuine emotional conflict she expresses within this relationship.
She and Glusman revel in the dysfunction, played for exasperated laughs in the early going. But as Simmons tale develops, unveiling more of their relationship and backstory, that same chemistry takes on a relevance and power that allows Eenie Meanie to deliver a climax more powerful than you might expect.
