Nat Rovit has obviously seen a few American films of the 1970s. His award-winning horror short Honeymoon at Cold Hollow could not nail the aesthetic more precisely if it had been filmed in ’74 and held in a vault until this year.
Honeymooners David (Russ Russo) and Mary (Jessie Paddock) traverse the wintry Vermont mountainside en route to their romantic cabin getaway. Like so many genre film heroes taking their chances in an isolated cabin, they are warned. It seems there was recently some trouble with a married couple, the husband going mad and all…
Mary nods empathetically. David seems…uncomfortable. But on they drive, the perfect, wilting and crackling era-appropriate score accompanying them through the snow toward their little slice of heaven. Si Begg’s musical composition even follows the lovers through their pitch-perfect Seventies romance montage.
Rovit’s film turns from syrupy to sinister with an unexpectedly funny image. The filmmaker mines Seventies cinema for its frustrating logical lapses as well as its loose and gorgeous aesthetic. Kudos to cinematographer John de Menil – this is one of the most gorgeous short films you’ll see, whether external shots of endless winter or the eerie, almost glowing tunnel of snow.
Russo and especially Paddock mirror the performance style that suits the overall time period tone Rovit so expertly develops, and by the time their brief story reaches its conclusion, you’re reminded again just how strangely beautiful blood can be when it slaps against snow.
Somewhere on the other side of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers lurks Emerald Fennell’s bacchanal, Saltburn.
Oliver (Barry Keoghan), a loner attending Oxford on scholarship, is befriended by the most beautiful, richest of the rich, Felix (Jacob Elordi, so good earlier this year in Priscilla). They become such good friends at school that Felix invites Ollie home to Saltburn, his family’s honest to God castle, for summer break.
A tale of casual cruelty versus calculated cruelty, Saltburn flirts with any number of have-nots in a have land stories: Rebecca, The Little Stranger, and most evidently, The Talented Mr. Ripley. That doesn’t mean the Oscar winner who penned Promising Young Woman lacks an original thought on the matter.
Fennell’s film is a seduction, sensuality dripping from every frame, every image – the interiors, the grounds, the bodies. On display is unimaginable wealth, and the fantasy of decadence and isolation that accompanies it. Felix’s family is drawn to Ollie like vampires to human flesh and blood. That they will tire of him is inevitable, and that he will do terrible things to remain in their graces is also inevitable. But that’s not truly the story.
And even if you have a clear sense of the direction the story will take, the tension will break you.
Not everything works in Fennell’s film, but man, Keoghan does. No one plays the vulnerable, potentially dangerous outsider quite as he does. Elordi is tender and lovely in an appropriately superficial way, and Gran Turismo’s Archie Madekwe nails the insecure wealthy-by-technicality cousin with ease.
The image of vacuous wealth becomes cartoonish, however wonderful Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike are as Felix’s wildly oblivious, inhumanly privileged parents.
It’s tough to watch a film that asks you to empathize with, much less pity, the grotesquely wealthy. Luckily, Fennell doesn’t. Her effort is far more cynical, finding obscene wealth and the desire for obscene wealth equally unappealing, if not equally villainous.
The filmmaker loses her way before she gets to the magnificent final dance scene. We relive clues and take a hard turn that feels too genre for what had been a glorious mess. In the end, Saltburn often feels like a story you’ve seen before, told with more style and meanness. But style and meanness count for something, and this cast understands that.
Adorably subversive, that’s how I would label Disney’s new animated feature, Wish. Chris Buck’s latest, co-directed with Fawn Veerasunthorn, strings together in-jokes and homages to Disney’s past to camouflage its fight the power message. Unfortunately, the balance doesn’t emphasize storytelling and the result is middling.
Asha (Oscar winner Ariana DeBose) is interviewing to become apprentice to King Magnifico (Chris Pine). Magnifico is much beloved, and not just because he’s so very handsome. It’s also because he takes such good care of his people’s wishes, which they donate to him when they turn 18 and then forget all about. Once in a great while, he grants one. But mainly that’s to mollify the masses.
I smell a message, and it is one I can get behind. Hold your elected official accountable, people. Do it! You owe them nothing.
Your animated movie owes you some things, though, and Wish struggles a bit to provide those things. Obviously DeBose has a voice, and her songs are solid. Pine’s a charmer and spot-on as the aggrieved leader. Better still, Alan Tudyk voices the Disney-required sassy animal sidekick, Valentino. He’s unnecessary and adds nothing to the actual narrative, but he’s a bit of fun and Tudyk’s an impressive vocal talent.
Asha also has seven buddies. One’s smart and wears glasses. Another sneezes a lot. One’s bashful. Another one is always drowsy. Get it? Just one (or seven) needless winks, as if to say, “We love Disney! We just hate entitled men in power who refuse to share that power with the very people who’ve built their fortune.”
Bit of a mixed message.
Of course, none of that matters if the film itself is a fun, gorgeous, memorable time for the kids. Wish has its moments. It often looks quite lovely. Each performance delivers something bright and fun. While the songs are not especially memorable, they’re enjoyable enough while you’re watching.
In truth, Wish shares a lot in theme with last week’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. And though that film is no masterpiece, it digs into the idea that you cannot fight the power from within. This is where Wish misses the point. It’s trying to do something radical without upsetting anybody, and that’s just not possible.
Adam Sandler and the whole TV Funhouse bunch get together for an animated kids’ film about a classroom pet who puts his many years of observing children to good use.
Leo (Sandler) the lizard, along with terrarium pal Squirtle (Bill Burr) the turtle, has lived in the same Florida 5th grade classroom for decades. At 74, and believing his life expectancy merits it, Leo plans to make a break for freedom. Instead, he becomes a kind of life coach to 10-year-olds.
Leo has a lot going for it. Sandler’s soft-hearted comedic presence feels perfectly at home in the classroom, while Burr’s patented “get off my lawn” crankiness offsets things nicely. The story, written by Sandler along with co-director Robert Smigel as well as Sandler’s frequent writing partner Paul Sado, touches on helicopter parenting and other anxieties authentic to modern youngsters.
The premise allows for lots of fun and funny moments as, by helping each kid better understand themselves, Leo comes to recognize his own purpose. There are also wildly random moments of comedy that feel in keeping with the filmmakers’ TV Funhouse origins while helping the film stay fresh.
The downside? Leo the film cannot seem to find its own purpose. It is essentially a musical, although in between songs you will forget that entirely. Nothing about the proceedings suggests the whimsy or theatricality of a musical, and though a couple of the songs are fun, every single number feels stitched in for no reason. Very few of the singers can sing and not one of the songs is memorable enough to merit its inclusion.
Worse still, Leo feels long. Trimming the songs wouldn’t hurt the story and it would seriously benefit the run time.
Sandler’s carved out a mainly mediocre presence in family entertainment, with three Hotel Transylvania films and Hubie Halloween. Earlier this year, he produced and co-starred in the absolute charmer You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, also for Netflix.
Leo doesn’t reach the heights of YASNITMBM, but it aims higher than the others and frequently endears.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
by Hope Madden
If I’m honest, I didn’t need another Hunger Games. While I recognize that the history of the games, the political upheaval that pushed society toward this level of privileged inhumanity, was certainly rife with possibility. But I couldn’t muster any interest, certainly not 2 ½ hours worth.
That’s saying something, because two of my all-time favorite actors – Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage – co-star. And Davis plays a mad scientist of sorts, which is inarguably intriguing. And Dinklage plays the actual creator of the hunger games themselves, so both villains? OK, I’m not made of stone. I’m in.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – while too long and cumbersome for a single film – delivers a scathing and pointed reflection of modern society with more precision and bite than any of its predecessors.
Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blythe) would one day rule the Hunger Games and all of Panem (played in the previous four films by Donald Sutherland), but today, he’s just trying to finish prep school and win the coveted Plinth scholarship to the university. But this year, there’s a catch. To win the scholarship, you need to mentor a tribute. They don’t have to win, they just have to make enough of an impression to draw viewers.
Again taken from a dystopian YA novel by Suzanne Collins, the latest Hunger Games holds a mirror up to society and sees power and privilege – and the lust to keep them – as cataclysmic to humanity. Collins is not wrong. And she’s not in a forgiving mood, bless her.
Davis and Dinklage are characteristically wonderful, Davis a particular delight in a weirdly sinister role while Dinklage offers a mournful, broken soul for the film.
Blythe’s arc is long and tough, and he convinces with a very human turn that’s all the more chilling for its understatement. Rachel Zegler plays the tribute in question, Lucy Gray, stealing scenes with a rebellious fire and f- you attitude. Jason Schwartzman is weatherman/amateur magician and Hunger Games host Lucky Flickerman, injecting the film with humor that’s equal parts flashy and cynical.
Francis Lawrence returns to direct, after helming all but the 2012 original. While his previous efforts balanced flash with action, the latest installment loses footing as it travels from one grim reality to another. But when a protagonist’s future is not in question, it can be tough to generate real empathy, interest or tension. Lawrence, thanks to a game cast and a go-for-blood script, manages to do it.
He hasn’t gone anywhere, and I don’t mean to imply that what he’s made in recent years is bad. In 2021 he made a remarkable documentary on The Velvet Underground, and his previous two narrative features – Dark Waters and Wonderstruck – were worthwhile and interesting. They just weren’t very Todd Haynes.
Perhaps after his 2015 masterpiece Carol, the capstone to a string of magnificent and unusual films (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven and I’m Not There), it was time for Haynes to find his stride with a more mainstream audience.
May December feels more like Haynes of old: a sultry situation masquerading as hum drum, populated by Tennessee Williams-esque damaged beauties wanting, wanting. Plus, Julianne Moore.
Moore, who stunned in both Safe and Far from Heaven, returns to Haynes-land as Gracie. Years back, beautiful Gracie went to prison for loving the wrong man. Well, boy. 7th grader, actually. Indeed, she had Joe Yoo’s (played in adulthood by Charles Melton) baby behind bars. But after prison, Gracie and Joe built a life together. Their oldest daughter is in college now, and their twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are just about to graduate from high school.
Soon-to-be empty nesters, Gracie and Joe welcome (if somewhat reluctantly) TV star Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) to their home. In just a few weeks, Elizabeth will play Gracie in a new independent feature film about Joe and Gracie’s life.
Portman is magnificent, biting into a role with more salty meat than anything she’s handled since Black Swan. Elizabeth is, of course, not what she appears to be. But what’s magical in Portman’s performance is the way the actor utilizes odd moments to reveal who Elizabeth truly is.
Moore is characteristically brilliant and wonderfully enigmatic. Elizabeth’s goal is to understand Gracie, which makes that the main goal of May December, but Moore’s not giving an inch. Is Gracie the master manipulator people might believe, or is she the babe in the woods she projects? Or is human nature more complicated than that, no matter how much movies and actors and audiences try to believe otherwise?
The whole cast impresses, but it’s Melton who truly surprises. The one innocent in the film, stunted by a lifetime of repressed and lived trauma, his Joe is the heartbreaking emotional honesty in a film that flaunts insincerity.
The filmmaker, working from a script by Samy Burch and Alex Menchanik, finds wry humor in the soap opera nature of the tale. It’s a morally ambiguous, gorgeously realized character study. It’s so good to have Todd Haynes back.
Love, exciting and new! Or, ancient and blood soaked. We’re not judging. There tends to be something wrong – lonesome, desperate, twisted, star crossed – about true love in horror. Maybe that’s what makes it so much more memorable. Here are our five favorite love stories in horror.
5. Spring (2014)
Evan (a spot-on Lou Taylor Pucci) has hit a rough patch. After nursing his ailing mother for two years, Evan finds himself in a bar fight just hours after her funeral. With grief dogging him and the cops looking to bring him in, he grabs his passport and heads to the first international location available: Italy.
It’s a wise setup, and an earnest Pucci delivers the tender, open performance the film requires. He’s matched by the mysterious Nadia Hilker as Louise, the beautiful stranger who captivates Evan.
At its core, Spring is a love story that animates the fear of commitment in a way few others do. The film’s entire aesthetic animates the idea of the natural world’s overwhelming beauty and danger. It’s a vision that’s equally suited to a sweeping romance or a monster movie, and since you’ll have a hard time determining which of those labels best fits Spring, it’s a good look.
4. Bones and All (2022)
The film follows Maren (an absorbing Taylor Russell, Waves), coming of age on the fringes of Reagan-era America. She meets and slowly falls for another outcast with similar tastes, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), and the two take to the road.
Given what the handsome young lovers have in common, you might expect a sort of meat lovers’ Badlands to follow. But Bones and All is less concerned with the carnage left in a wake than in what’s awakening in these characters themselves.
Bones and All is a tough one to categorize. I suppose it’s a horror film, a romance, and a road picture – not three labels you often find on the same movie. In Guadagnino’s hands, it’s more than that, though. He embraces the strength of the solid YA theme that you have to be who you are, no matter how ugly the world may tell you that is. You have to be you, bones and all. Finding Maren’s way to that epiphany is heartbreaking and bloody but heroic, too.
3. Border (2018)
Sometimes knowing yourself means embracing the beast within. Sometimes it means making peace with the beast without. For Tina—well, let’s just say Tina’s got a lot going on right now.
Border director/co-writer Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider) has more in mind than your typical Ugly Duckling tale, though. He mines John Ajvide Lindqvist’s (Let the Right One In) short story of outsider love and Nordic folklore for ideas of radicalization, empowerment, gender fluidity and feminine rage.
The result is a film quite unlike anything else, one offering layer upon provocative, messy layer and Abbasi feels no compulsion to tidy up. Instead, he leaves you with a lot to think through thanks to one unyieldingly original film.
2. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
Ana Lily Amirpour has made the world’s first Iranian vampire movie, and though she borrows liberally and lovingly from a wide array of inspirations, the film she’s crafted is undeniably, peculiarly her own.
Set in Bad Town, a city depleted of life – tidy yet nearly vacant – Girl (Sheila Vand) haunts the shadowy, lonesome fringes of civilization. One by one we get to know a pimp, a prostitute, an addict, a street urchin, and handsome Arash (Arash Mirandi).
Watching their love story play out in the gorgeously stylized, hypnotic backdrop of Amirpour’s creation is among the most lonesome and lovely ways to enjoy a good bloodletting.
1. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Visionary writer/director Jim Jarmusch enlists Tom Hilddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve (perfect!), a vampire couple rekindling their centuries-old romance against the picturesque backdrop of…Detroit.
Not since the David Bowie/Catherine Deneuve pairing in The Hunger has there been such perfectly vampiric casting. Swinton and Hiddleston, already two of the most consistently excellent actors around, deliver cooly detached, underplayed performances, wearing the world- weariness of their characters in uniquely contrasting ways.
Jarmusch, as he often does, creates a setting that is totally engrossing, full of fluid beauty and wicked humor. The film moseys toward its perfect finale, casually waxing Goth philosophic about soul mates and finding your joy.
