There is something absurd and mesmerizing about Lance
Oppenheim’s documentary Some Kind of Heaven. The greens of the golf
courses are insanely green, the aquas of the pools are blindingly blue/green,
the synchrony of limbs or golf carts in the choreographed dances is hypnotic.
They have synchronized golf cart dances.
The Villages is nuts!
Sort of the Disneyland of retirement communities, Florida’s The Villages is a 100,000 strong city, gated and catering exclusively to elderly residents. Their town square is painted and constructed to look like a real town square – it even has a fake history that city tour guides will spin with a smile and a deep, savage tan.
This is a community of affluence ripe for satire in an era of catastrophic generational income inequality. Instead, Oppenheim finds a more melancholy and poignant inspiration. Rather than lampoon the wretched excess, the filmmaker develops character studies, unveiling something more bitter than sweet in this dessert topping of a town.
Anne and Reggie, married 47 years, began falling apart
before they moved to The Villages, but his recreational drug use and attempts
at spiritual awakening are taking a toll. A poignant look at loneliness inside
the happiest place in old age, the recently widowed Barbara works all day and
finds herself an outsider in a world full of vacant, smiling eyes.
But the true outsider is the seediest and most fascinating character of the bunch. Eighty-one-year-old Dennis cannot afford The Villages, but he’s not ashamed to scam his way in. Living in his van and preying on lonely women with money, he reminded me of the sublime Senior Love Trianglefrom 2020.
That comparison, though, only draws attention to the fairly
superficial treatment Oppenheim gives the subjects. Dennis seemed to be an opportunity
to comment on an unseemly reality seeping into this community, itself a
perversion of reality.
Oppenheim’s framing and David Bolen’s cinematography create
an unforgettable visual experience, preparing you for a Wes Anderson meets John
Waters documentary about rich old people synchronized swimming.
Well, that’s just too high a bar. Who could live up to that? Instead, Oppenheim settles for a little razzle dazzle, a little character intrigue, and enough footage to make you wonder what the hell goes on in The Villages.
No one looks forward to the consequences of their actions.
If you believe in God, they’re coming for you one way or the other.
Robert Cuffley’s latest economically made horror Bright
Hill Road shadows no-longer-functioning alcoholic Marcy (Siobhan Williams)
through a pretty bad stretch. It would be hard to imagine things getting any
worse, really. So, Marcy decides to drive across country to spend some time
with her sister Mia in California.
She doesn’t drive straight through, though. She wakes up in
her car in front of a pretty dodgy looking hotel in some forgotten little town
and finds herself checking in. The place is super weird, though, and Marcy’s
never sure if she’s hallucinating, drying out, or seeing and hearing ghosts.
Most of the time Bright Hill Road works—playing on
your guesswork without giving away all its secrets. Sometimes it does not work.
But the film lives and dies with Siobhan Williams’s performance.
Slight but scrappy, she takes on the image of Angela Bettis
or Elliot Page. You worry for her, believe in both her vulnerability and the
chip on her shoulder that might get her through it. She’s weary but spirited
and more than anything, she’s in denial.
Cuffley’s direction takes on a hallucinatory quality that
suits Susie Maloney’s trippy script. Both Act 1 and Act 3 feel rushed—the
opening bit of violence shocks you out of complaining, but the final moments
border on being unearned. Still, the meat of the film meanders at a creepy pace,
one that conjures the feeling of a bad dream.
Bright Hill Road has an intentional, low rent
Overlook quality to it—something both supernatural and seedy. It carries its own
internal logic, and while the toughest eruptions of violence hit us in the film’s
opening moments, it has some grim images to share as the hotel takes on
additional guests.
Cuffley doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but his is an appealing riff on a familiar tune. Most of our demons are within. Trauma takes on an even more sinister form when it’s mixed up with shame. Addiction is its own monster. No one likes a shared bathroom.
Most of the movies we hoped to love in 2020 have been pushed to 2021, but it turns out, that may just have opened up opportunities for gems we’d have ignored otherwise. Yes, the best films of 2021 are smaller than the best films of 2019, but they are still great. Here’s the list of our favorite 25 movies from our least favorite year on record.
1.First Cow
Kelly Reichardt films tell a story, but not in the traditional
Hollywood sense. She draws you into an alien environment, unveils universal
humanity and shows you something about yourself, about us. There’s usually a
story buried in there somewhere. In this case, it’s about two outsiders in 19th
Century Oregon who find friendship.
And a cow.
The narrative lulls you with understated conversations and observations while the meticulously captured natural beauty onscreen beguiles. Within that, we see the potential of a young country through the eyes of Americans determining the dream.
2. Time
What director Garrett Bradley delivers with this documentary of a woman’s daily toil to end her husband’s prison sentence is a miracle of love, hope and superhuman perseverance. The film unfolds in a poetic, sometimes stream-of-consciousness fashion, enveloping you in the indefatigable spirit of Fox Rich. The film sings in a style that is simply transportive, carried by the voice of a true wonder woman.
Time is a stunning journey, searingly intimate with a sobering undercurrent of commonality. You wear this film like a blanket of feeling. Don’t miss the chance to wrap it around you.
3. Soul
For Soul, Pete Docter and co-writer/co-director Kemp
Powers create a deceptively simple, beautifully constructed ode to happiness.
And what a beautiful, big screen-begging journey it is. Soul looks
like no Pixar film before it, with wonderfully layered and personality-laden
animation for hero Joe’s daily life that morphs into an apt Picasso vibe for
our time spent with Joe in other worlds.
Just when you think you know where the film will leave you, it has other plans, and that’s okay. Because while the best of Pixar has always touched us with family adventures that speak to what it means to be human, Soul leaves plenty of room for our own improvisations, producing a heartfelt composition that may be Pixar’s most profound statement to date.
4. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
In 1927 Chicago, four musicians – three vets and a brash
youngster – gather in the basement of a downtown recording studio. They tune up
and rib each other, waiting for the star vocalist to arrive.
That would be one Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, legendary “Mother of the
Blues” and one of the first blues singers to make records. And in the late
1920s, those records sold, which meant Ma didn’t waste her time in studio
basements.
That spatial divide becomes the metaphorical anchor in director George C. Wolfe and screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Tony Award-winning play. And thanks to the blistering adversarial performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, the film has a show-stopping pillar on each floor.
5. Nomadland
Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland follows Fern (Frances
McDormand) on her journey in “Vanguard,” the van that serves as her new home.
Without an ounce of vanity or artifice, McDormand’s performance allows this
film to be one of resilience and promise. Given that Normadland is,
in fact, the story of a penniless Sixtysomething widow who lives in a van, that
is in itself a minor miracle.
But that’s the film—a minor miracle. Perhaps only in a year when the billion-dollar franchises were mainly held at bay could we make enough space to appreciate this vital and beautiful reimagining of the rugged American tale of individualism and freedom, which is almost always also a story of poverty.
6. Da 5 Bloods
A heist movie on the surface, Da 5 Bloods is
clearly about a great deal more than making it rich. Writer/director Spike Lee
has a lot to say about how those in power tell us what we want to hear so we
will do what they want us to do.
As commanding a presence as ever at 68, Delroy Lindo blends
vulnerability into every action, whether funny, menacing or melancholy. His
MAGA hat-wearing, self-loathing, dangerously conflicted character gives Lee’s
themes a pulse.
It should surprise no one that Lee’s latest happens to hit the exact nerve that throbs so loudly and painfully right now, given that he’s been telling this exact story in minor variations for 30+ years.
7. Mank
David Fincher’s rapid-fire dialogue is beautifully layered and
lyrically precise, more like the final draft of a script than authentic
conversations, which only reinforces the film’s commitment to honoring the
power of writing.
Gary Oldman expertly sells Herman Mankiewicz’s truth-to-power
rebellion as a sly reaction to his own feelings of powerlessness. His charm as
a “court jester” belies a growing angst about America’s power structure that
Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is eager to illustrate.
And though much of Mank‘s power is verbal (just try to catch a breath during Oldman’s drunken Don Quixote speech), Fincher crafts a luscious visual landscape. Buoyed by Erik Messerschmidt’s gorgeous B&W cinematography, Fincher recreates the era with sharp period detail and tips his hat to Welles with CitizenKane-esque uses of shadow, forced perspective and one falling glass of booze.
8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
With her 2013 debut It Felt Like Love, Eliza
Hittman brought a refreshing honesty to the teen drama. At its core, Never
Rarely Sometimes Always could be seen as Hittman’s kindred sequel to
her first feature, as two friends (Talia Ryder and a stunning Sidney Flanagan)
navigate a cold, sometimes cruel world that lies just beyond the hopeful
romanticism of first love.
NRSA shows
Hittman in full command of her blunt truth-telling, demanding we accept this
reality of women fighting to control their own bodies amid constant waves of
marginalization.
Just three films in, Hittman has established herself as a filmmaker of few words, intimate details and searing perspective. NRSW is a sensitive portrayal of female friendship and courage, equal parts understated and confrontational as it speaks truths that remain commonly ignored.
9. One Night in Miami
Regina King, who already has an acting Oscar, jumps into the
race for Best Director with a wise and wonderful adaptation of Kemp Powers’s
stage play. Powered by a bold and vital script from Powers himself, King
invites us into a Miami hotel room in 1963, on the night a young Cassius Clay
upset Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight title.
Clay, NFL legend Jim Brown and soul sensation Sam Cooke think
it’s party time, but Clay’s mentor Malcom X uses the occasion to engage the
room in a frank discussion about the next steps in the civil rights movement,
and about each man’s role in the struggle.
The four leads – especially Aldis Hodge as Brown and Leslie Odom, Jr as Cooke – are fantastic, propelling a film that finds its profundity through a refusal to settle for easy answers. Though existing mainly inside one room, One Night in Miami is in a constant state of motion. The characters challenge each other, and the film challenges us with a beautiful dignity that shines in the face of bigotry.
10. Shirley
Director Josephine Decker’s languid style seduces you, keeps you
from pulling away from her films’ underlying tensions, darkness, sickness. She
specializes in that headspace that mixes the story as it is and the story as
it’s told, which makes her a fitting guide for Susan Scarf Merrell’s
fictionalized account of this slice of Shirley Jackson’s life.
Decker manipulates the pacing, melancholy and sensuality of her
tale beautifully, drawing a stirring performance from Young. But my god, what
she gets from Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg.
The result is dark and unseemly, appropriately angry and gorgeously told—a fitting tribute to the titular author.
11. Promising Young Woman
In a riotous and incredibly assured feature debut as writer and
director, Emerald Fennell twists both knife and expectations in a rape-revenge
riff that’s relevant, smart and surprisingly hilarious—if you like your humor
dark.
A pessimism runs through Fennell’s film that’s hard to ignore
and even harder to criticize. But the film is true to the character of Cassie—a
woman who’s profoundly dark and unforgiving but not wrong.
Fennell’s film is not a nuanced drama concerning rape culture. It’s not telling us anything we don’t honestly know already. It’s not a scalpel to the brain, it’s a sledgehammer to the testicles.
12. Collective
On October 30, 2015, a massive fire broke out at the Colectiv
Club in Bucharest, Romania. Twenty-seven people died in the initial blaze while
another 180 were injured. In the days and weeks following the fire, dozens of
survivors died in the hospital of preventable infections. Over the next year,
journalist Catalin Tolontan would uncover a trail of corruption that had all
but hobbled the country’s health care system.
There’s a matter-of-factness to this film that is methodical and
precise. This clinically observational approach feels more authentic. For a
film so steeped in the hunt for the truth, Alexander Nanau’s fly-on-the-wall
perspective just seems right.
Collective isn’t
a flashy film – it doesn’t want to be. What it is, though, is a gripping look
at the good that can come from honest, professional investigative
journalism.
*Originally reviewed by Brandon Thomas.
13. The Trial of the Chicago 7
Chicago 7 artfully
and urgently recreates the scene of the federal court hearing against eight
defendants alleged to have conspired to incite the infamous riot at the 1968
Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s film rings with historical significance as well as disheartening immediacy. An alarmingly relevant look at the power of due process, free speech, and justice, Chicago 7 is catapulted by more than the self-righteousness that sometimes weights down Sorkin’s writing. This is outrage, even anger, as well as an urgent optimism about the possibilities in human nature and democracy.
14. News of the World
GD National Treasure TomHanks is Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a
Civil War veteran who travels from town to town reading news stories to weary
people looking for a distraction. In his travels he comes across a 10-year-old
girl (Helena Zengel, wonderful) who’d been raised by Kiowa people and is now
being returned against her will to her natural aunt and uncle.
Reluctantly, Captain Kidd agrees to transport her 200 miles
across dangerous territory. Not because he wants to or because he will benefit
in any way from it. In fact, he will probably die, and she with him.
Westerns lend themselves to poetry of a sort. News of the World offers a simple hero’s journey, understated by director Paul Greengrass’s influence and Hanks’s natural abilities.
15. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
The inimitable Charlie Kaufman adapts Iain Reid’s wildly
circuitous novel about delusion, self-hatred and self-inflicted loneliness. Who
better?
Jessie Buckley gives an award-worthy performance as a woman
visiting her boyfriend’s family for the first time. Unbeknownst to him, she’s
thinking of ending things.
Buckley’s effortlessly adaptable performance in an endlessly puzzling narrative ensures the movie never loses focus. She’s surrounded by sharp turns from Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis in a darkly funny near-horror of existential dread.
16. The Devil All the Time
The constant fight to overcome the worst in ourselves lies at
the heart of The Devil All the Time, director Antonio Campos’s
darkly riveting realization of Donald Ray Pollock’s best-selling novel.
Redemption is a slippery aim in and around Knockemstiff, Ohio,
and grace is even harder to come by. With a heavier hand, this film would have
been a savage beating or a backwoods horror of the most grotesque kind.
Campos and his formidable ensemble (Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Riley Keough, Bill Skarsgard, Jason Clark and More) deliver Pollock’s tale with enough understatement and integrity to cut deeply, unnerving your soul and leaving a well-earned scar.
17. Sound of Metal
Riz Ahmed is Ruben, a heavy metal drummer suddenly and
irrevocably going deaf. It’s a performance that brings this man to life with so
many layers and such nuance and power it requires your attention.
Even before you begin to appreciate Ahmed’s remarkable
performance, you’ll likely notice writer/director Darius Marder’s choices when
it comes to what he allows you to hear.
The sound design evokes the sensation of being in Ruben’s head. What he can’t really hear, you can’t, either. Marder mimics the humming, echoing, and blurring together of sounds to create an immersive sensation that never feels like a gimmick. It transports you, as does Ahmed’s performance, to a place you’ve probably never been.
18. Possessor
Possessor is
a meditation on identity, sometimes very obviously so, but the underlying
message takes that concept and stabs you in your still-beating heart with it.
Brandon Cronenberg’s created a gorgeous techno world, its
lulling disorientation punctuated by some of the most visceral horror to make
it to the screen this year.
Credit Cronenberg, too, for the forethought to cast the two leads as females (Jennifer Jason Leigh playing boss to a remarkable Andrea Riseborough). The theme of the film, if driven by males, would have been passe and obvious. With females, though, it’s not only more relevant and vital, but more of a gut punch when the time comes to cash the check.
19. Swallow
Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope,
writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to
anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.
Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing
scenes drive the narrative, it’s Haley Bennett’s performance that elevates the
film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Bennett’s character
transformation is startlingly true.
When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling of the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.
20. Senior Love Triangle
Co-writer/director Kelly Blatz creates a minor cinematic miracle
with his feature debut, Senior Love Triangle.
Inspired by co-writer Isadora Kosofsky’s remarkable longterm photo essay of the same name,
the film delivers a candid look into the intimate relationship among three
elderly characters: William (Tom Bower), Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) and Jeanie
(Marlyn Mason).
The film is equal parts charming, frustrating and heartbreaking. More importantly, it takes its characters seriously. In an era where veteran actors entertain us via “those crazy old people!” vehicles (watching Diane Keaton become a cheerleader in Poms sapped my will to live), Senior Love Triangle feels gloriously anarchic. The magic of Blatz’s film is that it offers a character study of the sort we simply never see.
21. Capital in the 21st Century
New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton has assembled an array of
scholars and historians (including Thomas Piketty, author of the source book)
for a 103-minute presentation that is so informative, measured and concise it
should earn you college credits.
There are graphs, illustrations and pop culture snippets from
film and television that Pemberton weaves throughout the lecture material to
attract the eye and boost the film’s overall entertainment value. But make no
mistake, his mission is about breaking down the 400 years of history that
explain the social and economic precipice we’re teetering on right now.
And while some of the lessons are not new (i.e. we need a strong middle class) the context here is so vivid and relevant many observations may land with an echo of “eureka!” inside your head.
22. Wolfwalkers
One of the brightest spots in a relatively weak year for
animated films, Wolfwalkers spins another beautiful Irish folk
yarn from the team behind The Secret of Kells and Song
of the Sea.
Robyn, a young English girl whose father is tasked with wiping
out wolves from an Irish village, longs to be a hunter herself. Things change
quickly when Robyn meets up with Mebh, a young firebrand who belongs to a
legendary group that transforms into wolves by falling asleep.
It’s a film bursting with dazzling animation and captivating lore, one full of warm silliness, gentle danger, wonderful voice work and a timeless, touching finale perfect for multiple family movie nights.
23. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
Writer/director/star JimCummings is officer John
Marshall of the Snow Hollow sheriff’s department. John’s father (Robert
Forster, in his final role) is the longtime sheriff of the small ski resort
town, but Dad’s reached the age and condition where John feels he’s really the
one in charge.
John’s also a recovering alcoholic with a hot temper, a bitter
ex-wife and a teen daughter who doesn’t like him much. But when a young ski
bunny gets slaughtered near the hot tub under a full moon, suddenly John’s got
a much bigger, much bloodier problem.
At its core, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a super deluxe re-write of Cummings’s heartbreaking and hilarious 2018 character study Thunder Road with werewolves. We call that a bloody good time.
24. Boys State
Imagine what you get when you bring over a thousand 17-year-old
boys together to play politics.
Fight Club with
zits?
You get Boys State, an annual exercise into the
“civil discourse” of state government. An American Legion program since 1935,
Boys State (and its corresponding project for girls through the Legion
Auxiliary) gives selected high school juniors the chance to build a
representative government from the ground up.
For directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, the result is an endlessly fascinating and thoroughly entertaining mixture of shock and awe.
25. The Vast of Night
Opening with vintage Rod Serling welcoming us to “Paradox
Theatre,” director Andrew Patterson unveils an incredibly polished debut, one
that’s full of meticulous craftsmanship, effective pacing and wonderfully
engaging storytelling.
Peterson’s commitment to production and sound design results in
a totally immersive experience. The period details – from costumes to recording
equipment – are more than just historically correct. Paired with the quick,
comfortably lived-in dialog from screenwriters James Montague and Craig W.
Sanger, they create a throwback setting that charms without the tell of undue
effort.
Peterson also flexes confidently behind the camera, moving from extended tracks to slow pans to quiet stills, all in service of the film’s wondrous tone. With Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz leading a stellar ensemble, what could have been a generic sci-fi time filler becomes a smart parable with an eerie grip.
What opens as a slyly comic take on a familiar horror scene turns – with a blinding light and the sound of a garage door – into something more silly and broadly funny. Born Again, Hands Off Productions’ 6 ½ minute visit with the “worst Satanists ever,” wastes no time and packs a comedic wallop.
Written by director Jason Tostevin and co-star Randall Greenland, the film’s success relies on a clever turn. Most of the pair’s collaborations, including 2015’s impressive (and award-bedecked) gangster short A Way Out, benefit from a similar subversion of expectations. But Born Again takes the team back to horror, and the sensibility here is much more enjoyably goofy.
Regular Tostevin collaborator, cinematographer Mike McNeese, lenses an impressive effort. The two handle the shift in tone beautifully, opening with sumptuous colors and tight close ups, then pivoting to a visual style that feels in on the joke.
Production values throughout impress, while performances – though brief – are strong. Tiffany Arnold, whose work relies almost entirely on facial expressions, is a riot, but the scene stealer is Greenland.
With sharp timing and a panda mask, Greenland perfectly represents Born Again: it’s so wrong, yet endearingly hilarious.
Pete Docter has written, directed, or been a part of the story team for some of Pixar’s greatest achievements. From Up to Inside Out, WALL-E to Toy Story, he’s helped set the standard that each new Pixar film competes with.
For Soul, Docter and co-writer/co-director Kemp Powers sense the time is right to tweak the winning formula a bit, creating a deceptively simple, beautifully constructed ode to happiness.
The updated blueprint starts with an African-American lead, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a middle-aged music teacher who still harbors dreams of stardom in a jazz combo. Just when Joe gets that long-awaited chance to play with one of his favorite artists, an out-of-body experience finds him fighting to get back to the life he’d been living.
Hence, the “soul” here may be not what you’re expecting. The music is all that jazz, but once Joe meets up with a wandering infant soul named 22 (Tina Fey), the film becomes a funny, surprising and truly touching journey toward becoming a fulfilled human being.
And what a beautiful, big screen-begging journey it is. Soul looks like no Pixar film before it, with wonderfully layered and personality-laden animation for Joe’s daily life that morphs into an apt Picasso vibe for our time in the before and after worlds. In those other worlds, Joe and 22 are gently pushed toward their destinies by the reassuring voice of the cubist Counselor Jerry (Alice Braga) amid a madcap series of detours carrying the emotional highs and lows of an inspired jazz trumpeter’s solo.
Foxx and Fey are joyfully harmonious, backed by jazzy arrangements from Jonathan Batiste, an ethereal score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and a stellar supporting group of voice actors that includes Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, June Squibb, Rachel House, Wes Studi and a perfectly nutty Graham Norton.
And though Soul delivers plenty of whimsical fun, it’s anchored by the existential yearning Docter hinted at with Inside Out’s “Bing Bong” character five years ago.
But just when you think you know where the film will leave you, it has other plans, and that’s okay. Because while the best of Pixar has always touched us with family adventures that speak to what it means to be human, Soul leaves plenty of room for our own improvisations, producing a heartfelt composition that may be Pixar’s most profound statement to date.
From the moment Sheriff Woody lamented that snake in his boot, it’s been inevitable that Tom Hanks would star in a Western. Not because he personifies the bruised masculinity, the solitary grit—that’s just ornamentation, anyway.
Tom Hanks would inevitably be the hero in a Western because we
believe he would do the right thing, however difficult that is.
The Western News of the World is a film we’re less inclined to expect from director Paul Greengrass. His kinetic camerawork and near-verite style that lent realism to United 93 and added tension to his Jason Bourne films hardly suit a Western. He adapts with a more fluid camera that underscores the tension as well as the lyricism inherent in the genre.
He also takes full advantage of our faith in Tom Hanks.
Hanks is Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran who travels from town to town reading news stories to weary people looking for a distraction. In his travels he comes across a 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel, wonderful) who’d been raised by Kiowa people and is now being returned against her will to her natural aunt and uncle.
Reluctantly, Captain Kidd agrees to transport her 200 miles
across dangerous territory. Not because he wants to or because he will benefit
in any way from it. In fact, he will probably die, and she with him.
Greengrass adapts Paulette Jiles’s nove with the help of Luke Davies. An acclaimed poet, Davies can be a handful for some directors. His material, even when done well, as it was with Garth Davis’s 2016 film Lion, can feel overwrought and overwritten. But Greengrass’s touch is lighter, his style always bending more toward realism than poetry, and here he’s struck a lovely balance.
Westerns lend themselves to poetry of a sort. News of the World offers a simple hero’s journey, understated by Greengrass’s influence and Tom Hanks’s natural abilities. A damaged soul faces an opportunity to prove himself, perhaps only to himself, and he takes it. And he is forever changed.
Now more than ever, home has become the ultimate refuge. Our home is where we are supposed to feel the most comfortable, the safest. Image how horrifying it would be if that sanctuary started driving you insane.
Well, maybe that’s not too hard to imagine right now, either.
Successful stockbroker Henry Sharpe (Grand Bowler) seemingly has it all: a great career, a supportive and equally successful wife (Sonya Walger, TV’s Lost), and three healthy kids. All of that changes the night Henry is attacked in his home by masked strangers. Paranoid and angry, Henry installs a state-of-the-art security system in their home. This system is so high-tech that the family must provide blood samples so that their DNA can be bonded to the system. As the Sharpes’ comfort with the new system increases, so does their anger and paranoia.
Writer Jason Chase Tyrrell and director Michelle Danner make a few big swings for social commentary, but the ideas and the execution just aren’t there. Dismantling the facade of suburbia as a safe haven has been a genre trope since the 1970s, and Bad Impulse’s inclusion of technology into the mix is neither fresh nor surprising. The broad strokes of this idea feel culled from a half dozen bottom shelf Twilight Zone episodes.
Bad Impulse could’ve been fun on a purely visceral level. Instead, it’s a movie that never fully commits to its genre leanings. Outside of a stylish and well-executed opening, the movie almost seems embarrassed to be in the horror/thriller genre. Going full Savini might not have saved the film, but it certainly would’ve made for a more enjoyable watch.
Danner is well-regarded as an industry acting coach, and she was able to attract some notable talent to the project. Bowler and Walger, in particular, do their best with the given material. Other industry vets like Dan Lauria (TV’s The Wonder Years) and Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) pop up in small roles to class the joint up. Unfortunately, the rest of the main cast does little to impress. The actors playing the Sharpe children aren’t up to the challenge of raising up weak material. Their solo scenes are where the movie loses too much steam to recover.
Bad Impulse is a tired, and somewhat lazy, attempt at social horror that manages to bungle both the social and the horror.
In a seedy underworld ripe for the comic book taking, a teen crime journalist named Hamster just wants a shot to tell the real stories of these streets. He stumbles across a homeless man who claims to be a hero from another dimension. The thing is, Hamster believes him.
Hokey, right? It is, but co-writer/director Adam Egypt Mortimer hits an interesting tone with Archenemy. He creates the space needed to develop some ideas before logic and cynicism close them down.
Mortimer combines animation with live action, sometimes bleeding
whispery voiceover into the mix to heighten the sense that nothing is as it
seems. Is Max Fist (that is a name!) really from a parallel dimension, or is he
an alcoholic schizophrenic homeless guy living under the bridge?
Mortimer mainly works from young Hamster’s point of view, occasionally veering into Max’s. By limiting the logic of the tale to the perspective of either a naïve optimist or the likely victim of mental illness and addiction, the filmmaker ensures that you’re never truly able to differentiate reality from unreality.
It’s a tough tone to maintain, but Mortimer manages, thanks
in large part to the commitment of his lead. As Max Fist (seriously, that name!),
Joe Manganiello carries Archenemy on his shoulders. The performance is
simultaneously lucid and muddled, with a physical edge that makes the character
feel like a threat even at his most vulnerable.
Around him, characters are sometimes cartoonish (Glenn
Howerton as The Manager or Paul Scheer as Kreig), but Manganiello keeps the
film from dipping into camp with a turn that’s gritty and believable.
Skylan Brooks does a fine job of elevating the least realistic role—a character that benefits from endless contrivances. The writing around Hamster is easily the weakest part of the film, but Brooks does what he can to keep you engaged.
As Hamster’s sister Indigo, Zolee Griggs walks an interesting line as well, the good guy and bad guy in the same breath. It’s an understated performance that impresses. And Amy Seimetz—always a welcome sight—delivers a resigned villainy that perfectly suits the picture.
Archenemy has plenty of faults, but more than enough inspiration and grit to make you want to overlook them.
