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Friend for the End

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Revealer

by Hope Madden

The apocalypse really brings out the best and the worst in people, doesn’t it?

Take Sally (Shaina Schrooten), for example. She’s been waiting for the end of days for as long as she can remember, but now that it’s here, is she really happy?

And what about Angie (Caito Aase)? She was pretty angry to start with, working a peep show booth in a 1980s Chicago strip mall, dealing with leering customers, a cheap boss, and that judgy bitch Sally. You think she might embrace the end times.

Filmmaker Luke Boyce traps the two in the peep booth while trumpets of doom sound outside and they have to work through their nonsense, make sense of the situation and try to survive.

Tiny cast, minimal sets, distractingly fun set—the film has all the earmarks of smartly made low-budget horror. Solid creature effects help Revealer transcend financial limitations and a sassy turn from Aase elevates an often threadbare script.

Boyce co-writes, along with Michael Moreci and Tim Seeley, but they run out of things to say or ways to say them. A lot of time is spent with illogical action contrived to extend conversations. Those conversations unveil all backstory, context, character growth—and with few places for his characters to go, Boyce seems hard-pressed to invent ways to show us rather than tell us what’s happening.

What is happening is that two people rethink who’s really a saint and who’s really a sinner and whether it really matters while Chicago burns. There’s not a lot of subtlety.

Boyce shows instincts for making the most of the frame. His visual ideas pay off comedically, amplifying the frenemy vibe while creating a fun atmosphere. The time period seems an odd choice, given the actual apocalypse, but it’s executed well enough.

In fact, a lot of Revealer is done just well enough. It could have been a really fun short. But at feature length, Boyce’s film feels like a lot of filler.

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Granada and the Quarter-Life Crisis

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Granada Nights

by Isaiah Merritt

Summer in Europe – a classic setting for romantic rendezvous, self-discovery, the natural habit of the hopeless romantic – and the perfect backdrop for a quarter-life crisis?

Abid Khan, writer/editor/director, chooses Grenada, Spain as the romantic backdrop to his debut work Grenada Nights. It’s a film exploring the journey that is self-discovery and what it means to belong to something in the trenches of existentialism – better known as a person’s early twenties. 

The first act of Grenada Nights is very emotionally engaging, due in large part to the sympathetic turn of the film’s lead, Antonio Aakeel. Aakeel portrays Ben, an aimless, hopeless romantic, with such sincerity you can’t help but root for him.

The film takes a tonal shift to a brighter side when Ben meets a group of students at the local university (Oscar Casas, Julius Fleischanderl, Laura Frederico) who challenge his perspective and encourage him to learn how to stand on his own two feet. 

However, it is at this turning point in the film when the narrative becomes somewhat choppy with jumps in time that are not well connected. Which left me asking myself, “Did I miss a scene?”

This disjointed nature coupled with the conventional method in which the film is crafted, especially in the second act, made it difficult for me to fully connect.

Thankfully, with the help of a much-needed montage, endearing performances by everyone in the cast, and universal themes, the film recovers and finishes with much more fluidity. Thus, allowing for an emotionally and thematically impactful ending. 

Grenada Nights was overall successful in illustrating the journey of a young man finding himself and a community in a complex world with unpredictable human beings.

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Plot Plop Fizz Fizz

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Flux Gourmet

by Hope Madden

There is something so delightfully confounding about trying to review a Peter Strickland film. Even summarizing the plot is a walk into absurdity. For example, Strickland’s latest, Flux Gourmet, takes us inside a culinary collective institute. Here, sonic caterers and a man documenting them struggle with artistic authenticity.

What are sonic caterers, you ask? Maybe you didn’t, but I did. They are sort of performance artists whose medium is food.

Elle (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed), Lamina (Ariane Labed, The Lobster, The Souvenir) and Billy (Asa Butterfield, Hugo) are the collective who’ve earned this year’s residency. Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie) oversees the institute. Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) documents.

Stones also narrates the film, and while his voiceover does help to articulate the plot of the film, his main focus is his own humiliating and painful flatulence problem.

The film often plays a bit like Strickland’s 2012 treasure Berberian Sound Studio, where an amiable outsider — a normal, nice guy — finds himself trapped with hedonistic, narcissistic artist types. Can he escape with his goodness intact?

Both films fixate on sound design, but Flux Gourmet settles into lighter, more clearly comic territory. And, at the risk of trying to read too much into Strickland’s absurdities, the film seems to say a lot about filmmaking as art versus commerce—the vulgar act of consuming and producing.

Which brings us back to poor Stones. Papadimitriou’s sympathetic performance delivers a nicely human counterpoint to the narcissistic, shallow characters that surround him. Christie, lavishly costumed and made up, is especially entertaining. Her patronizing sparks with Mohamed’s dictatorial Elle create absurd comic gold, only outdone by the self-impressed in-house medic, Dr. Glock (Richard Bremmer).

Strickland’s carved himself a recognizable niche in modern absurdist filmmaking with his precise, eclectic visual instincts. Funnier than Yorgos Lanthimos, more biting than Quentin Dupieux, more accessible than Leos Carax, Strickland wallows in his own very specific preoccupations. But he does so with such panache that it’s tough not to let him convert you.

This story feels somewhat slight compared to the complicated plotlines of Strickland’s earlier films, especially his 2018 horror treasure In Fabric. But Flux Gourmet is the filmmaker’s funniest feature.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Lightyear, Spiderhead, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Mad God & More

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Lightyear, Spiderhead, Cha Cha real Smooth, Good Luck to You Leo Grande, Brian and Charles, Mad God, Mid Century, Cocoon, Blowback, Echoes of the Empire

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Lost, Not Found

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The Lost Girls

by Cat McAlpine

After a whirlwind summer, Wendy Darling is too old to return to the lost boys again. So, what does poor Peter do? Simply waits for her daughter. And then waits for her daughter. And the one after that.

It’s easy to see how a classic, magical story is a nightmare in disguise. The Lost Girls explores four generations of Darling women and how a summer with Peter Pan impacts them for the rest of their lives. Based on the novel by Laurie Fox, the film has promise but drastically fumbles.

Adapting, directing, and starring in the film, Livia De Paolis has taken on more than she can chew. Weaving back and forth in time, while also capturing the stories of four generations of women, The Lost Girls fails to solidify any one character. Wendy is meant to be depicted as a dreamer, struggling between her imagination and real life. Unfortunately, she’s wholly irredeemable. None of Wendy’s experiences or actions endear viewers to her.

While the Peter Pan story is familiar, De Paolis would have benefitted from spending more time with Peter to show what has so enraptured four women across time. The fantastical characters are somehow the most believable. Both Louis Partridge as Peter Pan and Iain Glen as Hook are captivating on-screen. Unfortunately, they alone cannot carry the film.

There is a lot to be unearthed here. An immortal fae boy consistently grooms young women to adore him, only to abandon them as they age. Though each girl falls in love with Peter, he insists that their relationship remain chaste. His pirate counterpart, just as immortal and devious but in an older man’s body, pursues the girls and assaults them. That summer of whirlwind trauma haunts the Darling women for the rest of their lives. The results are muddy and inconsistent.

While The Lost Girls has opportunity to explore inherited mental illness here, it’s unclear if it is the source material or the adaptation that skirts the issue. Every Darling woman seems to present her illness differently, from flights of fancy to narcissism to suicide attempts. There is no clear source for their shared hallucination, or shared fantastical reality. There is no pattern to their illnesses or the consequences of a lifetime of disappointment after coming of age.

Bookended by bad CGI and a consistent lack of chemistry, The Lost Girls itself seems pretty lost.

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Lone Ranger

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Lightyear

by George Wolf

Exploring new life in the Toy Story universe comes with benefits – and drawbacks.

Sure, you inherit the goodwill earned by four of Pixar’s best feature films. But then, those films cast a mighty long shadow.

Lightyear taps into the warm fuzzies early, by letting us know why Andy wanted a Buzz action figure so badly that Christmas back in ’95. It’s because he loved the movie so much. This movie.

But honestly, for the first sixty minutes, you can’t imagine why.

Space Ranger Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) blames himself for marooning his settlement on a distant planet. A return to hyperspeed could bring everyone home, so Buzz is determined to keep testing until he gets it right.

Trouble is, each test flight sends him into a time dialator where 4 minutes up in space turns into 4 years back at base. So before Buzz knows it decades have passed, and he must take an untested team (Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules) and a robotic cat (Peter Sohn) into battle against Emperor Zurg’s forces for control of the precious hyperspeed fuel source.

That’s all fine, but that’s all it is. Director and co-writer Angus MacLane (Finding Dory) can’t find any way to make the toy’s story come to life.

Until Buzz comes face to face with Zurg (James Brolin).

Zurg has a big surprise for all of us, one that might as well send the film into hyperspeed.

Almost in an instant, the cinematography from Jeremy Lasky and Ian Megibben adds depth and wonder (that spacewalk – goosebumps!), MacLane quickens the pace while recalling both 2001 and Aliens, and backstories from earlier in the film pay off with gentle lessons on bloodlines, destiny, and what makes a life’s mission matter.

Stay for the credits and beyond to get two bonus scenes that bring a chuckle or two. But just make sure you sit tight for the final half hour. That’s when Lightyear delivers the kind of action and pizazz that just might make a kid change his Christmas list.

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Cultural Echoes

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Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan

by Tori Hanes

A thorough and colorful exploration of Mongolian history and culture, director Robert H. Lieberman’s Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan immediately astounds with breathtaking cinematography. That awe is transferred to the artistic animation as stories take shape, and is continued in every visual aspect of the film for its entirety. 

The documentary guides you from early Mongolian history to present-day culture. Lieberman’s visual storytelling almost does more to narrate the culture than the scattered interviews. Exploration into the fabric of early Mongolian society is where Lieberman excels. He details how fables turn into norms to connect the culture to an audience largely unfamiliar with the country.

First-person accounts from citizens raised nomadically (a fact touted in the film: nomadic citizens estimate approximately 30% of the country’s population) beautifully and effortlessly transcend the audience to the lush, rolling hills of farmers and livestock.

Unfortunately, an interest in both glossing over and thoroughly explaining the complex history of the country causes a bit of a pile-up. It’s understandable. Recognizing how the culture found itself in the present is paramount for the film’s ultimate point: that Mongolia is a rapidly evolving nation, shifting its position both in the world and internally. Knowing the past is important for expanding on the future, but a smoother structure would’ve made the information more digestible.

On the other hand, Mongolia’s constantly changing society remains under-explored. The choice to invest the audience’s time in the past without a significant payoff looking toward the future leaves the film imbalanced, slightly muddling the ultimate point. 

Echoes of the Empire is many things: informative, compelling, astounding, and sometimes, disproportionate. But the beauty of Lieberman’s vision tied closely with the captivating culture makes for a unique, lifted experience.

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In This Housing Market?

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Abandoned

by Hope Madden

Competently made and utterly unremarkable, Spencer Squire’s Abandoned still somehow managed to draw a top-notch cast. Huh.

Emma Roberts is Sara, a new mom battling post-partum depression. Her doting husband Alex (John Gallagher Jr.) thinks a change of scenery will help. Naturally, they purchase a beautiful, rustic farmhouse that was once the site of a massive family murder.

Will there be a creepy neighbor with intel on the crime? There will indeed, blessedly in the form of the always amazing Michael Shannon. Why he’s in this film is anybody’s guess (until you dig deeper into the credits), but he’s a welcome, fascinating presence.

Sara spends lonesome days alone with her baby while veterinarian Alex tends to the surrounding farms’ livestock. These follow sleepless nights, where creaking, stomping, and the laughter of children keep her awake.

Writers Erik Patterson and Jessica Scott conflate psychosis, post-partum depression and paranoia with a reasonable suspicion of a haunting. Is Sara overwrought from depression? Is the slain of the house trying to terrorize her? Is she actually just dangerously unstable from way back?

Options aplenty, none of them explored or particularly well established.

It’s a lot of weight on Roberts, who’s proven in films like The Blackcoat’s Daughter that an unbalanced horror heroine is well within her wheelhouse. Here she just seems lost.

Gallagher is wasted in yet another Good Guy Jim (Newsroom reference) role. But the supporting cast is excellent, beginning with Shannon. Kate Arrington (Shannon’s real-life wife who was so stellar in Knives and Skin) is perfection as the eager but judgy real estate agent.

Paul Schneider appears in an intriguing if underdeveloped role, one that appears to throw the entire film in a fascinating new direction. Sadly, Abandoned quickly reestablishes itself as the predictably middling supernatural thriller you knew it was from its opening minutes.

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Shooting Blanks

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Blowback

by Brandon Thomas

Rideshare driver Nick (Cam Gigandet of Twilight and The Magnificent Seven) needs fast money to help care for his hospitalized daughter. Thankfully in the world of Blowback, there’s a seedy criminal underbelly that rideshare drivers know about.

Nick gets hooked up with a crew that includes an ex of his (Michelle Plaia) and her new squeeze, Jack (Randy Couture of The Expendables). Like clockwork, Nick is quickly double-crossed after the heist and left for dead. What follows is a meandering, undercooked tale of revenge. 

First thing’s first: Blowback was a chore to sit through. It’s a movie completely devoid of clever plotting or surprises. Instead, the entirety of the film is built upon genre cliches that have been done better hundreds of times before. Cliches and tropes can be fun and entertaining, but it helps to have good writing, directing, and acting to support them.

Gigandet and Couture are the big “names” in Blowback, and I’m having a hard time thinking of two other leads more boring than them. Gigandet has turned in some okay work in bigger fare over the years, but he’s not the kind of actor that can take weak material and beef it up through his performance. Couture, on the other hand, has never turned in a performance I would call good. The majority of his line readings feel like they’re coming from cue cards.

Director Tibor Takacs has been steadily working as a director since the mid-80s. He’s responsible for two cult horror favorites in The Gate and I, Madman. While these two films aren’t bonafide classics, they did show that Takacs knew how to approach genre with some style. This is not the case with Blowback.

The film is competently made, but only from a point-and-shoot standard. Takacs’s vanilla directing style here does nothing to help the already cheap feel of the entire production.

Blowback offers 93 minutes of nothing new in the realm of revenge cinema. Save yourself the time and put on Point Blank again. Or maybe one of the John Wick movies. Maybe Kill Bill would scratch that itch as well. In fact, any other movie would work out better than Blowback.

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Hot in the City

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Cocoon

by Rachel Willis

Berlin, 2018 is the setting for writer/director Leonie Krippendorff’s coming-of-age drama, Cocoon (Kokon).  

Awkward, quiet Nora (Lena Urzendowsky) is our guide through this realistic, slice-of-life look at teenagers as the hottest summer on record sweeps Berlin. A follower, Nora spends most of her time with her older sister, Jule (Lena Klenke) and Jule’s best friend, Aylin (Elina Vildanova).

When Nora meets carefree, older student, Romy (Jella Haase), she explores a different kind of world – one apart from her sister. Where Jule and Aylin are obsessed with boys and their looks, filming the bulk of their activities on their cell phones, Nora is still finding her way. But it’s an innocent wrestling match in the pool between Nora and Aylin that makes Nora realizes she looks at girls “the way boys do.”

Krippendorff’s masterful take on the embarrassing and exhilarating moments of being a teenager, especially a teenage girl, is both observant and often subtle. Nora’s mother is rarely home, leaving Jule to take care of a younger sister, who is at times the more well-adjusted of the two. A misguided attempt of Jule’s to keep their mother home is met with a level-headed response from Nora.

Romy offers Nora a chance to separate herself from both her sister and the struggles of a home-life absent of parents. Nora is happiest when she’s allowed to explore a teenager’s life – one with adventure and joy and sexual experiences.

Though it’s never made clear how much older Romy is than Nora, there are a few scenes that highlight the age gap between the two. Often, Nora’s responses to Romy’s attentions come across as childish, making the pairing feel a little more awkward than is probably intended. However, it can be argued that Nora’s behavior in her relations with Romy serves as a contrast to the ways she has been forced to shed her youth at home in order to survive. It’s only with Romy that Nora is able and allowed to express herself fully.

In a strong film, there are still a few disappointments: a predictable turn of events during the film’s climax, the not-so-subtle sequences with a caterpillar, an ethereal plastic bag. (I didn’t like it any better in American Beauty).

Fortunately, in a film with so many wonderful moments, the minor flaws are easily forgiven and adolescence in all its incongruous beauty is put on magnificent display for us to either relive or relate.