Screening Room: Fantastic Beasts 3, Father Stu, Dual, Paris 13th District & More
Tag Archives: movie reviews
Dead Horses and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
by Hope Madden
After much delay, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore comes to big screens this weekend. The film is the needless third installment in a 5-part series based on a single 2001 guidebook that walked readers through the various magical animals of the Harry Potter universe. The guidebook’s “author” is Newt Scamander, and Harry Potter has jotted notes throughout it.
That’s it. No narrative, no characters, really. It’s like a little, pretend textbook from Hogwarts.
The book was a semi-adorable cash grab — one additional little scrap to throw the hungry Harry-heads at the height of Pottermania — meant to raise money for charity. And now it’s a planned 5-part series, each installment thus far clocking in at well over two hours.
Oof.
The new adventure catches up with Newt (Eddie Redmayne) assembling a ragtag band of witches, wizards and muggles to help mentor Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) fight the dark magic of Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen).
Grindelwald hates muggles (non-magical losers like us) and wants a war. He’ll deceive, bully, appeal to baser instincts, and when it comes down to it, cheat the election to take over the wizarding world.
It’s a good guys v bad guys tale with loads of Trumpian nods (keep an eye on that newspaper), but that feels hollow given creator/co-writer J.K. Rowling’s history of bullying vulnerable populations. A main role for the recently shameful Ezra Miller (who plays forlorn baddie Credence Barebone) doesn’t help those optics, either.
As superficial spin goes, though, it is nice to have Mikkelsen on board. He replaces Johnny Depp (easily the best thing about the previous installment) as the film’s villain. Where Depp embraced the magical elements and leaned into camp, Mikkelsen is all elegant, understated menace.
The cast boasts a lot of solid, wasted talent. Law continues to charm as the unflappable Dumbledore, Redmayne’s quirk tests patience, Dan Fogler’s a bright spot.
Director David Yates — who directed four HP movies as well as the previous two installments in this franchise — struggles this go-round to even conjure much visual panache to distract from the bloated, overpopulated and underdeveloped script.
Rowling co-writes for the screen again with Steve Kloves, her scripting partner for every Potter and Fantastic Beasts installment. The Potter films often suffered from unimaginative adaptation, which could be chalked up to the writers’ tough time pruning the source material.
No idea what’s to blame here, but these movies are not getting any better.
City of Love
Paris, 13th District
by Christie Robb
Director Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District is slow. Languorously slow. Like honey oozing off a comb. Like a flower unfurling. Like a relationship evolving over time.
Audiard’s film, which he co-wrote with Nicholas Livecchi and Lea Mysius based on stories by graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, follows the intertwined lives of Emilie, Camille, Nora, and Amber over the course of a year, give or take. Friendships develop and wane. Love affairs start and end.
All is shot in gorgeous black and white except for a bit that’s rather startling and in color.
The cast members are stunning (Lucie Zhang as Emilie, Makita Samba as Camille, Noemie Merlant as Nora, and Jehnny Beth as Amber) and the camera delights in lingering over their often naked bodies. Their characters are complex and the actors play them with a realism and vulnerability that is frankly impressive.
It’s a realistic portrayal of a set of modern relationships with all the ecstasy and ugliness that makes them complicated and exciting and worth having.
The plot features dating apps, cam girls, death, real estate, cyberbullying, and MDMA. To say more about the story would wreck the experience of watching it and trying to anticipate how the characters’ lives will interconnect.
And I Feel Fine
Wyrmwood: Apocalypse
by Hope Madden
Back in 2014, co-writer/director/Aussie Kiah Roache-Turner brought new life to tired ideas. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead took an old-school Australian road movie and littered it with some undead. The two went well together. The result was a novel, often funny, action-packed splatter fest.
The original braided ideas from Romero and others, but somehow the amalgamation felt fresh. Zombie movies are rarely fresh. Same can be said for sequels. Zombie sequels — very hard to say something new.
For his sequel, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, Roach-Turner writes again with brother Tristan. They return to the post-apocalyptic Outback to catch up with zombie/human hybrid Brooke (Bianca Bradey), her scruffy brother Barry (Jay Gallagher), and whatever’s going on at those military outposts.
As this is a zombie movie, assume the worst about those outposts.
Roache-Turner leans a little more heavily on dark humor for this one. The previous installment was brighter with its laughs, while this go-round finds comedy mainly inside the viscous filth of the laboratories.
Nicholas Boshier, returning as The Surgeon, gets to even wink and nod toward the Evil Dead franchise.
Meanwhile, outside the barracks, brothers and sisters are duking it out with everyone and everything to save or avenge one another.
Bradey and Gallagher take a backseat this time to Rhys (Luke McKenzie), a skeptical soldier whose twin was slain in the last film. He teams up, somewhat reluctantly, with Maxi (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), whose sister is inside one of those nasty labs.
A couple of intriguing kills (or near-kills), a little loose-end tying, and a few laughs keep this one from disappearing completely from memory. The inspired lunacy of Roache-Turner’s original is gone, replaced with entertaining if forgettable fun.
Screening Room: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ambulance, Sonic 2, All the Old Knives, Cow & More
Poor Cow
Cow
by Matt Weiner
There’s nothing in the rulebook that says a cow can’t be nominated for Best Actress, right? Because Luma, the bovine star of Andrea Arnold’s mesmerizing new documentary, deserves to be the most improbable frontrunner of awards season.
The filming for Cow took place over about four years at a British dairy farm. There is no voiceover, no reassuring David Attenborough nature narration… Just an unsparing look at Luma and the daily existence for cattle on a modern farm.
For Luma, that means a life built around providing milk through high-tech milkers. In one of the film’s more arresting images, Arnold shows Luma entering what the industry whimsically calls a milk carousel—but takes on the foreboding look of a milk panopticon each time Luma trudges into place.
Arnold and her director of photography Magda Kowalczyk capture everything through Luma and the cattle. When farm workers appear, their presence is in the background, guiding the animals or performing routine examinations but never the focus of the action.
It’s a powerful effect that lays bare our relationship to modern farming without being proscriptive. Cow shows just how much these animals do for us—Luma cannot even nurse her calves. Instead, it’s right back to the milk carousel so no sellable product goes to waste.
And this truly seems like one of the more favorable options for modern farms. The cows get some seasonal pasture time, although the sense of calm it provides them makes the limited time outside the pen all the more depressing.
Luma may not have a voice, but Arnold’s masterful direction makes her as complex and compelling as any Arnold protagonist. Luma deals with birth, sex, sadness, grief. Arnold makes the case that we are connected to these animals. These animals may not have any agency beyond capitalist utility in life, but Cow demands that we at least take the time to reflect on this relationship and what we might owe the things in life that give us so much.
Twisted Game
Agent Game
by Tori Hanes
In his third feature film, director Grant S. Johnson dives into the unrewarding cinematic web of United States bureaucracy. Agent Game centers around a group of expendable CIA officers scapegoated in a coverup and forced to fight the government for their lives.
While not entirely pro-United States, Agent Game makes the assumption that the audience shares a universal respect for their government. While this approach might have worked until the 2000s, it’s unrealistic in today’s age of information and dissent.
Governments’ relationships with their societies change, and a film that doesn’t reflect that shift puts itself at a disadvantage. Ultimately, Agent Game never climbs out of the ideological valley it begins in.
The acting is, at best, uninspired. At its worst, it’s incompetent. This does not entirely seem to be the actors’ fault. Though perhaps verging on hyperbole, it looks like the actors were only given single takes. It’s hard to conjure another logical explanation for why, at points, it seems that they’re performing the lines for the first time.
The only performances that manage to break into a believable space come from Jason Isaacs and Dermot Mulroney, who play two uncommonly moral CIA agents. While bouncing off of each other, they’re able to find the grit and realism Agent Game overwhelmingly lacks.
Though certainly not intended, Mel Gibson’s character ironically breaks up the monotony of the dull narrative. Supposedly the mastermind behind a twisted government operation, Gibson plays more like a parody of himself than a commanding force. The strangely elongated pauses and conviction behind cheesy quips make for moments of unintended comedy gold.
The story revolves around two separate but connected missions, confusingly paced and set non-chronologically. It seems the director and writers started with a fairly simple concept and decided the plot was too easily understood, so they created unnecessary and underdeveloped roadblocks in the narrative.
Ultimately, if there was even a hint of self-awareness, this film could be an enjoyable ride. Instead, it spends its energy trying excessively hard to distract you from its faults.
Bill (Jason Isaacs) laments about his place in government morality, and his line perfectly encapsulates the takeaway of the film:
“Looks like we’re not the good guys anymore.”
Were we ever, Agent Game?
Alone in the Dark
See for Me
by Brandon Thomas
There’s nothing better than a thriller with a great hook. Sometimes it’s as simple as a private investigator with a fear of heights being used as a pawn in a murder, such as Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Sometimes the hook is much more elaborate like the narrative and truth-bending nature of Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In director Randall Okita’s See for Me, the hook falls somewhere in the middle as a blind housesitter is pitted against three thieves.
After a skiing accident leaves her visually impaired, Sophie (Skyler Davenport) is hired to house sit for a wealthy client. After the sun sets, Sophie is surprised by three intruders looking for a massive cash score from the home’s safe. While able to call 911, Sophie needs immediate help and uses an app called “See for Me” to connect with a technician who can relay what they’re seeing through Sophie’s phone. Luckily for Sophie, Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy) is a former combat vet. As the intruders become aware of Sophie’s presence, Jessica uses her expertise to direct the at-risk Sophie out of harm’s way.
Great hook or not, See for Me is a fairly simplistic movie in execution. Okita never tries to jazz the picture up with crazy camera work or elaborate set pieces. Panic Room this movie is not (and more so for budget reasons, one would think). Okita uses the frame wisely as the suspense of Sophie’s predicament slowly plays out. The house is one of the stars of the movie with its large rooms, high ceilings, and exposure through floor-to-ceiling windows. Okita makes sure we’re allowed to see so much of what’s happening within the house while Sophie cannot, a strategic move that naturally increases the tension.
Davenport commands every second of her screen time. A visually impaired person in real life, Davenport’s approach to Sophie is one of complexity. There’s a stubbornness to the character as she refuses to be seen as anything less than capable in the eyes of those around her. Sometimes that comes out as hostility toward family, friends and even clients. This stubbornness becomes an important asset as Sophie barters with her would-be captors, and uses Kelly’s guidance to fight back.
The use of the “See for Me” app threatens to strain believability at times, mostly in how Sophie is turned into an expert marksman with little to no guidance. For a film so grounded for most of its running time, these bits in the movie’s back half tend to stick out and betray its smarter elements.
Through a clever hook and a great lead performance, See For Me becomes one of 2022’s first stand-out thrillers.
Teenage Wasteland
Coast
by Christie Robb
Directors Jessica Hester and Derek Schweickart take us on a spin through the life of alienated 16-year-old Abby (Fatima Ptacek) who has always felt like an outsider in her rural California town, certain she has to make it out to find herself.
Writer Cindy Kitagawa nails the egocentrism of adolescence. The arrival of a cool new girl in town (Mia Rose Frampton) and an indie rock band stuck in the area while their tour bus receives repairs precipitates Abby’s first life crisis. She’s thrown for such a loop that she’s willing to alienate her parents, teachers, and childhood friends in order to discover herself and her potential life path.
Is it with Dave (Kane Ritchotte), the sexy front man who tries to sweet-talk her into performing?
Running in counterpoint to Abby’s story is her mom’s (Cristela Alonzo). Abby is now the same age her mom was when she got pregnant. Mom’s hoping the apple falls very, very far from the tree on that one. Now, in her 30s, Mom is drinking a little too much, smoking in bed, and staring down the barrel of a divorce from a husband who got his coworker pregnant. During her job as a night nurse she hangs out with an older patient (played by the great Melissa Leo who doesn’t have nearly enough to do), also a former teenage mom, now estranged from her grown daughter.
At school, Abby struggles to complete a hometown history report. The purpose of the report, as the class frequently recites in unison is because: “Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.” The hope is that Abby will come to terms with the past and learn from it so she can choose the path forward that is right for her. A somewhat heavy-handed final act directly addresses this.
Coast doesn’t exactly break new ground in the coming-of-age genre. Far too much time seems to be spent on the thinly-developed stock characters of edgy-new-friend and dreamy-boy when Abby’s childhood friends and her mother seem much more charismatic and potentially interesting. But Ptacek’s Abby believably cycles between the joyful naivete of childhood, the judgmental anger of adolescence, and the more balanced perspective of adulthood. And the soundtrack kinda rocks.
Sound of Silence
Midnight
by Rachel Willis
In the dark and deserted alleys of an unnamed Korean city, Do Shik (Wi Ha-Joon) hunts. His prey is mostly young women, but men are not invulnerable to his violent pursuits.
In writer/director Oh-Seung Kwon film Midnight, two Deaf women (mother and daughter) find themselves in a game of cat and mouse with the manipulative and persistent killer.
From the very beginning, Kwon’s focus is building tension. The gorier aspects of what Do Shik does are left to audience imagination. And by introducing the killer first, Kwon allows us to be privy to the type of games this hunter plays.
After a creepy opening scene, the movie takes a little time to introduce us to our other main characters. Kyung Mi (Ki-joo Jing) works as the Deaf representative in a call center and longs to take a vacation with her mother. We also meet an older brother and younger sister who playfully battle over the sister’s curfew for her blind date. The film moves back and forth between these pairs before reintroducing us to our sadistic killer.
Some of the tension is built upon the things mother and daughter can’t hear. A sticky door lock that, even while pulled slowly, emits an ear-splitting whine. The approach of hurried footsteps from behind. A thrown shoe.
The second act is the film’s strongest portion. The incompetence of police officers trying to “help” leads to some funny moments, and the reactions of the officers and their inability to understand teeter between hilarity and frustration.
There are also some moments of teeth-grinding tension as the two women find themselves alone and taunted by Do Shik. His threatening words are delivered in low tones and close-lipped sentences, allowing the audience to understand what the two women can’t. Kyung Mi’s mother is not as quick as her innocent daughter to accept that Do Shik is trying to help. She quickly picks up on the contradictions in his attitude, which range from distraught to amusement.
Yet for all the strength of the second act, the movie unravels in the final segment. Suspension of disbelief is tested with some truly questionable character decisions. Though the tension carries over from the middle section, it’s hard to maintain when you’re too busy wondering why certain characters behave the way they do.
A disappointing climax muddies the film’s overall effect and overshadows the message. However, there’s enough working for this tense and exciting thriller to entertain even the most skeptical viewer.
