Good looking week this week for those of us too damn lazy to get off the couch. Oscar nominees, great directors, brilliant actors, songs, dances…hard to go wrong.
Click the movie title for the full review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSNwXMpntg
by George Wolf
Is it me, or is there an encouraging trend building here? In the last few years, mainstream teen comedies such as The Duff, The Edge of Seventeen and Love, Simon have shown more smarts and diversity, with less reliance on the same old same old pandering.
Blockers starts with a cliched teen sex premise – gotta get some before college! – and turns it sideways, managing solid laughs (and some self-aware winks at romance fantasies) in the process.
Julie, Sam, and Kayla (Kathryn Newton, Gideon Adlon, Geraldine Viswanathan) are three Chicago-area high school seniors who vow to all turn in their V-cards on prom night (so they can commemorate the occasion every year at the Olive Garden).
The girls’ respective parents (Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena) uncover the plans for “sexpact2018” (after a hilarious bit of emoji code-breaking) and set their own quest in motion: less cocking and more blocking.
Veteran writer Kay Cannon (30 Rock, the Pitch Perfect films) makes her directing debut, giving some nicely paced zest to the winning script from Brian Kehoe and Jim Kehoe. Even the film’s most outlandish moments (a “chugging” contest gone way wrong) seem to serve the film’s purpose.
Young adults are capable of making intelligent choices, and young women don’t need saving. Adults can be juvenile in their own self-interest, and some raunchy laughs can be had making all of those points.
Yes, the points come on a bit strong time and again, but the cast (especially Mann) keeps it lively and relatable. If Blockers means this movie trend is working, keep ’em coming.
Giggle.
by Hope Madden
Damn.
So, John Krasinski. That big, tall guy, kind of doughy faced? Married to Emily Blunt? Dude can direct the shit out of a horror movie.
Krasinski co-writes, directs and stars in the smart, nerve-wracking gut-punch of a monster flick, A Quiet Place.
Krasinski plays the patriarch of a close-knit family trying to survive the post-alien-invasion apocalypse by staying really, really quiet. The beasts use sound to hunt, but the family is prepared. They already know sign language because their oldest, played by Millicent Simmonds (Wondertruck) is deaf.
A blessing and a curse, that, since she can’t tell if she makes noise, nor can she tell if a creature comes calling.
Simmonds is wonderful as the conflicted adolescent, her authenticity matched by the tender, terrified performance given by Noah Jupe (Wonder) playing her younger brother.
As their expecting mother, Emily Blunt is magnificent, as is her way. Simultaneously fierce and vulnerable, she’s the family’s center of gravity and the heart of husband (onscreen and off) Krasinski’s film.
But you expect that from Emily Blunt. She’s amazing.
What you may not expect is Krasinski’s masterful direction: where and when the camera lingers or cuts away, how often and how much he shows the monsters, when he decides the silence will generate the most dread and when he chooses to let Marco Beltrami’s ominous score do that work for him.
The script, penned by Krasinski with horror veterans Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, stays one step ahead of your complaints. Just as you think, “Why haven’t they done this?” a clear explanation floats across the screen, either as translated sign language, a prop on a table or a headline in Dad’s gadget-laden basement bunker.
It’s smart in the way it’s written, sly in its direction and spot-on in its ability to pile on the mayhem in the final reel without feeling gimmicky or silly.
And the monsters are kick ass. That’s a big deal.
At its heart lies a sweet sentiment about family, but sentiment does not get in the way of scares. A Quiet Place works your nerves like few films can.
by Hope Madden
First note in my Isle of Dogs screening notebook: God damn it, I want a dog.
Second note: Wait, Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton are in another film that appropriates Asian culture? Come on!
And that about sums up the conflicting emotions Wes Anderson generates with his latest stop-motion wonder.
Isle of Dogs is Anderson’s second animated effort, coming nearly a decade after another tactile amazement, 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. A millennia-long feud between the Kobayashis of Megasaki and dogs comes to a head when corrupt Mayor Kobayashi uses a dog flu outbreak to whip up anti-canine sentiment and banish all dogs to Trash Island.
But his orphaned ward Atari (Koyu Rankin) steals a miniature prop plane and crash lands on Trash Island looking for his beloved Spots (Liev Schreiber).
The little pilot is aided in his quest by a scruffy pack including Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), gossipy Duke (Jeff Goldblum, a riot), King (Bob Balaban), and reluctant helper/lifelong stray, Chief (Bryan Cranston).
Other voice talent as concerned canines: Johansson, Swinton, F. Murray Abraham and Harvey Keitel.
Explained via onscreen script in typically Anderson fashion, dog barks have been translated into English and Japanese remains Japanese unless there’s an electronic, professional or exchange student translator handy. The choice shifts the film’s focus to the dogs (in much the way Peanuts shows remained focused on children by having adults speak in squawks). It also means that moviegoers who speak Japanese are afforded an enviably richer experience.
But for a large number of American audiences, it means that Japanese characters are sidelined and the only human we can understand is the white foreign exchange student, Tracy (Greta Gerwig). From Ohio, no less.
Between an affectionate if uncomfortably disrespectful representation of Japanese culture and Gerwig’s white savior role, Anderson’s privilege is tough to look past here, even with the scruffy and lovable cast.
The animation is beyond spectacular, with deep backdrops and meticulously crafted characters. Atari’s little teeth killed me. The voice talent is impeccable and the story itself a joy, toying with our dictatorial nature, the need to rebel and to submit, and how entirely awesome dogs are.
Set to an affecting taiko drum score with odes to anime, Ishiro Honda, Akira Kurosawa and every other Japanese movie Anderson watched as a kid, the film is clearly an homage to so much of what he loves. His skill remains uniquely his own and nearly unparalleled in modern film.
And Isle of Dogs is a touching, flawlessly crafted animated dream. That probably should have been set in America.
by George Wolf
Pairing up Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland is a welcome idea with exciting potential. Much of that potential is left unexplored by The Leisure Seeker in favor of embarrassing schtick and cheap sentiment.
The veteran actors star as Ella and John Spencer, a senior couple in Massachusetts who bust out their old RV and run from the concerned grasp of their kids for a bucket list trip. John is a retired literature professor who has long idolized Hemingway, so Ella decides it’s time to visit the Hemingway House in Key West before John’s memory fades away completely.
This road trip setup, from the novel by Michael Zadoorian, is more organically sound than most, but soon gets exploited with easy pickings from two crops of low-hanging fruit.
Director and co-writer Paolo Virzi (Like Crazy) strings together the random, disconnected hijinx this genre seemingly demands, while also poking cliched fun at old people riding motorcycles, talking sex or packing heat. This laziness comes much too frequently, with punchlines based on age not action, bringing a stale odor to the goodwill earned from putting these two endlessly likable stars at the forefront.
Mirren and Sutherland are worth a better investment, and both end up working much too hard selling these warmed-over tropes, but the missed opportunities extend beyond the cast list.
Some worthy issues on aging come into view, only to be passed by or, worse yet, made light of, all in service of a maudlin conclusion you could see coming in the dark with no headlights. Expecting every film on senior issues to carry the magnificence of, say, Amour, would be unrealistic, but The Leisure Seeker hardly wanders beyond the Going in Style end of the pool.
Bad trip, man.
What’s new in home entertainment? Three movies you probably missed in theaters that deserve your attention and one dog. Choose wisely. Let us help.
Click the movie title for the full review.
This week’s Screening Room Podcast looks at Spielberg’s latest, Ready Player One, plus Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, Flower and what to look for in this week’s new home entertainment releases.
Check out the full podcast HERE.
A few weeks ago we covered Sex and Death. That is, the act of sex leads directly to death. Sex kills you.
This week, as a kind of wrong-headed sibling, we talk with B Movie Bros about Death and Sex. Which is to say, the death part comes first. Either party can be dead, or both can. Reanimated corpses are fine, if that’s your thing. Just as long as at least one participant is dead.
Though few scenes go by that don’t showcase Katie Orgill’s bare breasts, this odd British import is just a sweet romance at its heart. It’s a romance between a young mortician/med student and the corpse of his unrequited love, which doesn’t sound that sweet, I’ll grant you, but between Mark Jax’s delusional naivete and the strangely tender script penned by director George Dugdale with Paul Hart-Wilden and Mark Ezra, the film may openly flirt with necromancy, but it courts true romance.
Why is Christine (Orgill) buried naked? Why does everyone hide their British accents—and so poorly? Why clutter the film with so many atrocious actors? Why is Orgill so bad at holding her breath? Who knows or cares, when Eartha Kitt plays the landlady?
The film is weirdly memorable—equally grotesque and tender-hearted. You can’t exactly look past its snail’s pace or poor acting, but it works on you. There’s not much else like it.
Young hospital orderly Pau (Albert Carbo) attends the morgue, where the famous actress Anna Fritz (Alba Ribas) awaits an autopsy come morning. He secretly texts a selfie with the body to two buddies. They show up to see the body.
Soon, three young men are alone with a beautiful, naked, dead woman with absolutely no chance of being interrupted for hours. If you’re a little concerned with where this may lead, well, you should be.
As a comment on rape culture, the film is a pointed and singular horror.
Sort of a cross between 2008’s irredeemable rape fantasy Deadgirl and Tarantino’s brilliant Kill Bill, The Corpse of Anna Fritz will take you places you’d rather not go.
And while contrivances pile up like cadavers in a morgue, each one poking a hole in the credibility of the narrative being built, The Corpse of Anna Fritz has a lot more to offer than you might expect—assuming you stick it out past the first reel.
“Beauty isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
So says an uncredited Alessandro Nivola, a fashion designer waxing philosophic in Nicolas Winding Refn’s (Bronson, Drive) nightmarish new film The Neon Demon.
The line, of course, is borrowed. Refn tweaks the familiar idea to suit his fluid, perfectly framed, cynical vision.
Jesse (Elle Fanning) is an underaged modeling hopeful recently relocated to a sketchy motel in Pasadena. Will she be swallowed whole by the darker, more monstrous elements of Hollywood?
Or is Ruby (Jena Malone) the godsend of a friend Jesse needs?
Nope. And she’s not to be trusted with the kind of beautiful corpses you might find in an LA mortuary, either.
Are you squeamish?
First-time feature writer/director Emiliano Rocha Minter announces his presence with authority—and a lot of body fluids—in this carnal horror show.
A hellish vision if ever there was one, the film opens on a filthy man with a lot of packing tape. He’s taking different types of nastiness, taping it inside a plastic drum to ferment, and eventually turning it into a drink or a drug. Hard to tell—loud drum banging follows, as well as hallucinations and really, really deep sleep.
During that sleep we meet two siblings, a teenaged brother and sister who’ve stumbled into the abandoned building where the hermit lives.
What happens next? What doesn’t?! Incest, cannibalism, a lot of shared body fluids of every manner, rape, necrophilia—a lot of stuff, none of it pleasant.
Minter has created a fever dream as close to hell as anything we’ve seen since last year’s Turkish nightmare Baskin.
There’s little chance you’ll watch this film in its entirety without diverting your eyes—whether your concern is the problematic sexuality or just the onslaught of viscous secretions, the screen is a slurry of shit you don’t really want to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnTY6q7bt78
Rated R for “an abundance of outrageous gore,” Dead Alive is everything the young Peter Jackson did well. It’s a bright, silly, outrageously gory bloodbath.
Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) secretly loves shopkeeper Paquita Maria Sanchez (Diana Penalver).His overbearing sadist of a mother does not take well to her son’s new outside-the-home interests. Mum follows the lovebirds to a date at the zoo, where she’s bitten (pretty hilariously) by a Sumatran rat-monkey (do not mistake this dangerous creature for a rabid Muppet or misshapen lump of clay).
The bite kills her, but not before she can squeeze pus into some soup and wreak general havoc, which is nothing compared to the hell she raises once she comes back from the dead. Soon enough, Lionel has a houseful of reanimated corpses, some of them a bit randy.
You ever wonder where a zombie baby comes from?
by George Wolf
Acrimony begins with an on-screen definition of the word “acrimony.” That’s how much credit writer/director/producer Tyler Perry gives his audience.
He doesn’t treat his lead much better, again creating a strong female character who must receive her comeuppance.
She is Melinda (Taraji P. Henson), who’s under court-ordered anger management after harassing her ex-husband Robert (Lyriq Bent) and his new fiancee (Crystie Stewart). As Melinda tells her therapist why her anger is justified, she tells us, too, and just keeps on telling.
Flashbacks give us the Melinda and Robert story, while constant voiceovers spoon-feed us enough information to qualify as an audiobook. The organic dialogue offers no more nuance (cell phone rings once: “He isn’t picking up!”)
It’s contrived and obvious at nearly every turn, and though Henson delivers her usual spunk, Perry’s penchant for demonizing women who don’t stand by their men is on display. The hand he plays for the film’s finale smacks of a cop out, a “get out of jail free card” for how he’s written Melinda’s character.
That card gets trumped, and the final showdown fizzles into borderline camp. It’s a fitting end to a mess of a movie.
by Cat McAlpine
Are you still upset about the 2008 housing crash? Of course you are. We all are. Ten years ago banks put the American dream up for sale and the market inevitably collapsed in on itself.
But when the American people were trying to pull themselves back up by their bootstraps, the financial industry had already moved on. To China.
Get ready to look up at the glistening spires of capitalism only to realize we’re all huddled under a house of cards.
Writer/Director Jed Rothestein weaves a thrilling, terrifying tale about the next financial disaster awaiting our country. Some of your neighbors have already lost their life savings. The current administration is actively stripping away financial regulations between the average investor and billions of dollars in fraud. Shady deals are happening now, and honestly, there’s probably nothing you can do about it.
Rothestein calls on the full spectrum of documentary devices: talking heads, voice-over narration, cartoon re-enactments, visual graphics, and more. They work for the most part, but some of the b-roll seems out of place. The most effective and evocative imagery is a series of long, sweeping drone shots of cities and factories.
Rothstein really hits his stride when short-seller Dan David tours his hometown of Flint, MI. Flint is the poster child of blue-collar suffering for white-collar crimes. The camera captures haunting images of the town that really reflect the tangible repercussions of corporate fraud.
China Hustle warns us of a new danger on the horizon. Billions of dollars are propped up in the empty shells of defunct American companies, waiting to collapse.
And then there’s the warning of a larger danger, entrenched in the very fabric of our society. No one is looking out for the American people. The SEC, the accreditation firms, the lawyers, and the bankers—they all invest in their own interests. Even the men blowing the whistle on fraudulent Chinese companies first make money off of them.
“Companies have companies’ best interests at heart.”
And that’s the real hustle.
