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Save Room for Pie

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Thanksgiving

by Dustin Meadows

In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ambitious double feature homage to throwback genre pictures, Grindhouse, roared into cinemas. While the film was a commercial failure, it easily found a cult audience, thanks in no small part to the pedigree of the directors and the accompanying pitch perfect fake movie trailers contributed by Rodriguez (Machete), Edgar Wright (Don’t), Rob Zombie (Werewolf Women Of The SS), and Eli Roth (Thanksgiving). It’s taken sixteen years for the latter to be realized, but Roth’s holiday-inspired slasher has finally arrived to join the ranks of Thanksgiving horror flicks like Blood Rage and Thankskilling!

While the original Thanksgiving trailer had more in common with the sleaze and brutality of 80s slashers (like Maniac or Don’t Go In The House), Roth’s finished film falls more in line with contemporary slasher/whodunits, like the Scream films without the meta-deconstruction of horror films and tropes. The film opens with a darkly comic and brutal Black Friday massacre that mirrors the real life chaos of the annual consumer circus, and sets in motion the story that picks up one year later as a killer dressed as a pilgrim and wearing a John Carver mask begins a murderous spree of revenged slayings against the instigators of the deadly Black Friday incident.

Jessica (newcomer Nell Verlaque) is the heart of the film, leading the cast of potential young victims trying to learn who the killer is while avoiding being served up at the dinner table. A very game Patrick Dempsey (fully leaning into his native New England accent) is also along for the ride as the town sheriff working with the kids to put an end to John Carver’s deadly holiday plans. Roth and Jeff Rendell’s script offers up plenty of red herrings throughout the film, and while the killer’s identity will be fairly easy to deduce by most slasher fans, the inspired violence and set piece kills more than make up for the thin mystery of who John Carver really is. Fans of the original trailer will recognize several moments throughout the film (trampoline, anyone?), but Roth manages to shake things up enough to keep you guessing how each act of violence is gonna play out. Sprinkle in a little Rick Hoffman and just a pinch of Gina Gershon, and you’ve got a pretty good dinner!

Though the opening Black Friday scene alone makes this dish worthwhile, the bulk of the film may not measure up to the promise of the original trailer. But that will likely have more to do with the pressure of expectations of modern horror audiences and time passed, and less with the actual execution of the film itself.

Hungry for a new turkey day tradition that delivers on outlandish violence? Skip the Westminster Dog Show and enjoy a helping of Thanksgiving.

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It Was Capitalism All Along!

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Blow Up My Life

by Christie Robb

Blow Up My Life is a paint-by-numbers thriller/comedy telling the story of a Adderall-snorting computer programmer, Jason (Jason Selvig), who commits career suicide by live-streaming his alcohol and drug-fueled celebration after he wins an award for the new app he has created for his pharmaceutical company employers.

The app dispenses customized doses of medicine through a vape. Its goal is to step people down from an opiod addiction.

When Jason uncovers evidence that the company’s latest software update has altered the app, which is now causing consumers to get hooked on the vape (ensuring skyrocketing profits for the company), he decides to do some undercover work to expose the truth.

A first feature written and directed by Ryan Dickie and Abigail Horton, the movie is technically proficient and a sometimes laugh-out-loud funny take on the thriller genre. Filmed on a tight budget over 18 days during October of 2020 with a relatively small cast, the film manages to do a lot with few resources. Under those circumstances, the fact that it manages to get most of the numbers colored in is pretty remarkable.

However, the main characters are underdeveloped. So, when the screws are tightened and Jason finds himself running for his life, it’s difficult to summon the energy to truly care about his welfare. His cousin, the Black hacktivist “girl-in-the chair” Charlie (Kara Young), is also a lightly sketched character, but Young’s charisma helps the audience connect with her.

As many of these movies do, this one starts in the middle in one of those “So, I bet you’re wondering how I ended up here?” situations. Strangely though, it kind of ends in the middle as well. There’s no resolution. No payoff.

The screen just goes black, and there’s no need to wait around for an end credits scene. There isn’t one. It’s up to you to complete the final bits of the canvas in your imagination.

Fright Club

Fright Club: True Love in Horror Movies

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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.

We found ours.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: The Marvels, The Holdovers, It’s a Wonderful Knife & More

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The Marvels, The Holdovers, It’s a Wonderful Knife, Butcher’s Crossing, Onyx the Fortuitous, Mr. Organ, Ghosts of the Void, Love Virtually

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You’re Beginning to Look a Lot Like Victims

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It’s a Wonderful Knife

by Hope Madden

For some people, it’s not even Thanksgiving, let’s not get into Christmas movies quite yet, OK? Meanwhile, countless people have been binging Hallmark Christmas tales since July. And the rest of us are still stinging that Halloween is over.

By that math, 2/3 of all viewers will be pleased with It’s a Wonderful Knife, the Christmas story with all the feel-good cheer of the classics and all the bloody knifework of a solid slasher.

The title gives away the film’s core conceit, but honestly, it bore more of a resemblance to Dolly Parton’s 2020 holiday debacle – I mean, charmer – Christmas on the Square. One small town real estate tycoon (Justin Long) intends to turn a historic strip into a shopping and dining oasis, even if it means bullying kindly old Mr. Evans (William B. Davis) into selling his family home.

But wait! No time to think about that when a white clad, knife wielding maniac is on a tear! And all this in the first ten minutes of the movie. Fast forward one year and everyone’s pretty much over those murders, except Winnie (Jane Widdop). No one cares, no one notices, it wouldn’t even matter if she’d never been born (…never been born…never been born…).

Director Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls) and writer Michael Kennedy (Freaky) have some fun piling on the holiday film cliches. And there are plenty of reasons to enjoy their movie.

First of all, Justin Long. There are few people more reliably fun to see in a horror flick, and in this one he rocks a spray tan and fake teeth. So many bonus points.

Also fun, Joel McHale (Becky), who is somehow now the go-to for horror movie supportive dad with daughter issues. Add the always welcome Katharine Isabelle, and though she’s tragically underutilized, it’s great to see Cassandra Naud (who was phenomenal in Influencer).

The story itself, with its plot twists and turns, is not as clever as it pretends to be. It is wryly funny, though, and often quite sweet. It’s not as raucous as Kennedy’s Freaky nor as badass as MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls, but it is a bloody slice of Christmas fun.

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Electric Ladyland

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Love Virtually

by Rachel Willis

With Love Virtually, director L. E. Staiman explores what it means to be in a relationship in a virtual world.

Staiman co-stars as Kalvin. Spurned in love at a young age, Kalvin turned himself into a VR sensation as a form of revenge.

Sharing the screen with Kalvin are down-and-outs Roddy (Peter Gilroy), Barry (Ryan O’Flanagan), and La Monte (Vince Washington). Barry’s wife is in love with a chat bot; La Monte is responsible for spreading a virus around the world; and Roddy has lost his one true love to his video game obsession.

The women in their lives are equally pitiful, but each has been affected in real life by their online personas (or the personas of their partners).

A significant portion of the film is set in the virtual world, which is populated by avatars with a distinctly 90s feel. Characters dress up to slip into their VR headsets to hit the hottest clubs. It’s not clear why the characters need to dress their physical bodies for VR clubs since the beauty of an avatar is that it can be whoever you’re not. It’s simply one of many aspects that don’t quite make sense.

There are several side plots that fit the film in a strange yet satisfying way. What you think is a rom com turns into an action espionage video game movie (of sorts). It takes the film in an unexpected direction that makes it different from what you’ve seen before. And while most of the humor feels forced, there are a few scenes that elicit genuine laughs.

Unfortunately, the overall affect is that, aside from Roddy, none of the characters come to life (as real people or as avatars). Their wants and needs are shallow, which isn’t entirely out of place in a film where people spend more time with each other online than they do in real life.

For a film that relies heavily on its animated scenes, the animation is outdated – both as a style and as a representation of what virtual reality is. Avatars look not too far removed from Lara Croft in the original Tomb Raider video game. We’ve come a long way from 1996.

If you’re in the mood for something different, Love Virtually might satisfy that craving, but not for very long.

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Intergalactic. Planetary.

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The Marvels

by George Wolf

With some misguided storytelling and off-screen tumult, Marvel’s post-Thanos phases have been uneven, to say the least. Recent rumors even have the studio willing to pony up whatever it takes for a re-assembling of the core Avengers.

Nią DaCosta’s The Marvels gets the MCU back on some steady ground, layering characters, tones and multi-verses for a fast and fun trip to the stars.

Intergalactic trouble starts when Cree warrior Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) uncovers a “Quantum Band” buried on planet MB-418. Her meddling causes a power surge in the universe jump points. It’s enough to get the attention of both Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), but nothing compared to what Dar-Benn could do if she found the other matching Band.

So where would it be?

In Jersey City, on the arm of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (scene-stealer Iman Vellani). And it isn’t long before Carol, Kamala and a grown up Capt. Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) come together to find that every time they use their respective “light-based” powers, they switch physical spaces.

This is going to make it difficult to battle Dar-Benn and her revenge tour, but “The Marvels” will have to figure it out.

DaCosta (Candyman, Little Woods), also co-writing with WandaVision‘s Megan McDonnel and Loki‘s Elissa Karasik, sets a funny, frisky tone from the start. The split screen panels and universe jumping tap into a hipper Spider-Man type vibe, while Ms. Marvel’s glee at working alongside her idol provides a seamless infusion of her series’ youthful charm.

There are a few rough spots, including more trouble in the Marvel visual department. Some of the wider, more expansive looks are fine, if not exactly eye-popping, but too many of practical set pieces come with a look of discount production design and thrown-together costuming.

Most of the film’s humor lands firmly, with a self-aware wink and a nod. And while our heroes’ stop at a planet that communicates only through song falls flat, the musical number starring Goose the cat becomes a laugh out loud highlight.

For real, if you liked Goose the first time, this installment will feel like catnip.

The end result creates its own crowd-pleasing jump point, one that brings Marvel’s small screen spirit to the multiplex. At 105 minutes (and that includes one mid-credits stinger) The Marvels may be the most brisk feature in the entire MCU. But compared to the bloated run times spent on Love and Thunder, Quantumania and Eternals, this less certainly feels like more.

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Not at Home, Not Quite Alone

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The Holdovers

by George Wolf

It’s the holiday season! The time of peace, joy, and goodwill!

Or…conflict, resentment, and spite.

Director Alexander Payne serves up plenty from group B in The Holdovers, a period comedy that also finds time to unwrap some warmth and understanding.

It is December 1970, and most of the boys at New England’s Barton boarding school are heading home for the two-week Christmas break. Circumstance has left five “holdovers” behind, where they will endure the disciplined regimen of Mr. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a bitter history teacher who delights in the misery of his rich, entitled students.

But through an additionally cruel twist of fate for the angry, young Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa), the four other left behinds get sprung, leaving Angus alone with the cantankerous teacher the boys have nicknamed “Walleye.”

Well they’re not quite alone. Kitchen manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is on campus, too. Mary’s still mourning the loss of her son Curtis in Vietnam, and she has no room in her heart of festive merrymaking.

Giamatti is perfection as a man who seems to have forged a comfortable “hate-hate” relationship with life. Sessa impresses in his screen debut, giving depth to the rebellion that has brought Angus multiple expulsions from multiple schools. And Randolph brings plenty of weary humanity, crafting Mary as a heartbroken woman still trying to understand why her Curtis was deemed more expendable than these rich white boys who are preparing for college instead of war.

And as Mr. Hunham tells Angus that we “must begin in the past to understand the present,” David Hemingson’s script sends the three unlikely friends off on a “field trip.” The adventure will reveal how their respective pasts have shaped them, and how they may have more in common than they knew.

There are areas of contrivance that recall Hemingson’s extensive TV resume, but Payne (Nebraska, Sideways, The Descendants) grounds it all with a comfortable restraint that allows the actors and some terrific production design to work authentic moments of magic and laughter..

We all have a story. Life can be unfair, and most of us are struggling with something. Be kind.

Those are lessons that seem to resonate a little deeper this time of year, which means now is the perfect time to accept an invitation from The Holdovers.

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American Nightmare

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Ghosts of the Void

by Christie Robb

Jason Miller’s directorial debut Ghosts of the Void is successfully unsettling.

Jen (Tedra Millan, Daddy’s Girl) is barely keeping her shit together. She’s been supporting her husband Tyler’s (Michael Reagan, Lovecraft Country) ambition to become a novelist. He’d shown promise in college, but now they’ve been evited from their home and are trying to find an inconspicuous place to park for the night with only $40 and the contents of the car to their names.

They’ve driven to the “nice” side of town, just outside a country club’s fence. But physical proximity to the middle class will not be enough to secure their safety.

Jen’s not slept in weeks. They don’t have health insurance. And what’s with those creepy masked folks in the woods?

The film flashes back from the couple’s chilly car to scenes of the past, depicting the growing strain of the financial and creative pressures on their marriage and Jen’s growing emotional servitude to an unstable partner.

With a cast of just eight people and a very limited number of locations, Miller delivers an unexpected amount of creeping unease. Danger could come from multiple angles, so you find yourself scanning the screen, hoping to keep one step ahead of the jump scare.

Millan and Reagan deliver layered and realistic performances that keep the pace of this slow-burn of a character-driven horror moving.

With themes of financial and housing insecurity and lack of access to health care,  Miller really taps into the ways in which the American capitalist system can easily shift from an ambitious dream to a living nightmare.

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Buffalo Stance

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Butcher’s Crossing

by Hope Madden

Nicolas Cage has done the wild West before. Of course, with 116 acting credits, he’s done most everything before. But he’s done this recently ­– earlier this year in The Old Way, and a couple of years back in Prisoners of the Ghostland. What’s new with Butcher’s Crossing?

Cage plays Miller, a buffalo hunter. He works for himself. And he knows the stragglers with their paper thin hides around these parts ain’t nothing compared to the majestic creatures he’s seen in the thousands over in Colorado territory. If only somebody’d pony up the dough, he could put together a hunting party and bring in the biggest haul this town’s ever seen.

Well, sir, that’s just what young Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) wants to hear. He dropped out of Harvard in search of adventure, and this looks to be that.

Co-writer/director Gabe Polsky adapts John Williams’s gorgeous 1960 novel of bitter truth and American mythology. Visually striking, the film’s untamed beauty belies its meager budget. Creating an atmosphere with limited means is an instinct Polsky has shown since his impressive feature debut, Motel Life.

Miller, Will, the hyper-religious Charlie (Xander Berkeley) and the scoundrel Fred (Jeremy Bobb) head into the Rockies in search of buffalo. What they find, along with the beasts, is themselves, and that is not pretty.

Butcher’s Crossing becomes a descent into madness film. This should be where Cage excels. Madness is essentially his brand. The character isn’t written well enough to leave an impression and Polsky’s storytelling is too tight to let the veteran madman open up. Lunacy never materializes.

Hechinger, memorably naïve in News of the World, delivers well enough as innocence turned sour. Both Bobb and Paul Raci, as the bitter entrepreneur who warned the men against the hunt, add a bit of color to the story.

Butcher’s Crossing is an ugly story of greed. It’s an ugly story of America. The shots of bison carcasses make an impression – the photography throughout is impressive, but this sickening image is particularly something. Unfortunately, Polsky’s script and cast can’t quite match the visual clarity he gives the tale.