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Stop or My Grandma Will Shoot

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Thelma

by George Wolf

Within the first few minutes of Thelma, writer/director Josh Margolin establishes two important things: 1) 90+ year-old Thelma (June Squibb) and her twenty-something grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) share a sweetly authentic relationship, and 2) we’re not here to simply laugh at old people eating hot wings or talking dirty.

The laughs are here, but they are lightly organic and relatable across generational divides, consistently peppered around a kinda sorta heist caper and the search for a getaway scooter.

After getting computer lessons from her helpful and patience grandson, Thelma receives a convincingly scary phone call. The boy on the line sure sounds like Danny, and he says he’s been arrested. Then an authoritative voice (Malcolm McDowell) takes over, telling Thelma to cough up $10,000 for her grandson’s quick release.

Danny, and his parents (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) eventually sort out the scam, but not before Thelma has dropped the cash in a mailbox. The police don’t offer much help, so Thelma sets out to “borrow” her friend Mona’s (Bunny Levine’s) gun and her other friend Ben’s (the late Richard Roundtree) tricked out scoot, and go get her 10k back.

Yes, Ben worries that they’re “old, diminished,” and Thelma laments that most or her friends are “dead, got sepsis or moved to Cleveland.” But they’re not the only ones struggling with their current phase of life. Danny is full of anxiety about his move into adulthood, his parents can’t seem to let go, and Margolin makes sure the message here is that we all have our good and bad days.

“And what’s today?” Ben wonders.

“We’ll find out!” Thelma is quick to reply.

Squibb is an absolute delight (shocker!), and her pairing with the distinguished Roundtree makes for an irresistible duo of vigilantes. Posey and Gregg supply some effective slapstick, and Hechinger (so good in News of the World) impresses again as a young man who worries that caring for his grandma may be the only thing he’s really good at.

Thelma is Margolin’s feature debut, and it displays a fine flair for madcap comedy that comes with a crowd-pleasing, easily digestible message. You’ll be laughing with Thelma, not at her, and that’s an important difference that Squibb rides all the way to the ATM.

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Kisses Are Hers and Hers and His

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Chestnut

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Jac Cron offers a slice-of-summer in a young woman’s life in the skillfully written film, Chestnut.

Annie (Natalia Dyer) is on the verge of moving across the country when she meets Tyler (Rachel Keller) and Danny (Danny Ramirez) at a bar. Tyler is the first to approach, and what begins as a shared drink becomes a budding romance.

Cron’s script is a subtle take on young men and women stumbling toward their futures, one uncertain foot at a time. Danny and Tyler work shifts at a high-end restaurant, spending their nights drinking at bars or dancing in clubs. Annie is easily caught up in this world, as she struggles with her fear of the future.

Though Dyer is the core of the film, it’s the scene stealing Keller is who draws most of our focus. Tyler’s dynamic presence is tinged with the unexpected. She keeps Annie off-balance, stringing her along in a way that may feel familiar to anyone who’s faltered in a new relationship. Annie’s joy and confusion is understandable. Tyler is often unknowable.

While Keller draws us in, Dyer often leaves us floundering. Her acting veers too often toward melodrama, which doesn’t fit the tone of the film. The awkward flirtation is awkward for the wrong reasons. Instead of coming across as realistic, it feels unnatural. It’s unfortunate the camera work seems to mirror Dyer’s acting, as neither are particularly interesting.

As Danny, Ramirez is left with less to do than either Keller or Dyer. However, he imbues the character with a certain unease that suggests there is more to Tyler than Annie realizes. His own relationship with Annie comes across more naturally, more honest, helping the audience understand what draws Annie into their lives.

Additional characters pass in and out of the film, each offering more to the picture of who Annie is. There are no overt realizations or narrative moments of clarity. Something much simpler and more interesting happens as Annie’s summer comes to a close.

As a whole, the movie has some hard-to-overlook faults, but the writing is good enough that it doesn’t really matter.

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Love Will Tear Us Apart

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Banal & Adama

by Matt Weiner

A tale of star-crossed lovers gets a welcome refresh that’s equal parts tragic and enigmatic in Banel & Adama, the feature debut from Senegalese writer and director Ramata-Toulaye Sy.

Khady Mane anchors the film as Banel, a fiercely independent woman who wants to chart her own destiny in life rather than adhere to the traditions of her rural village. Building a new home together rather than staying in the village is seen as odd enough, but her strangeness goes too far when she persuades Adama (Mamadou Diallo) to give up his bloodline claim to village chief.

What the elders see as a spiritual sickness becomes manifest when a drought falls over the remote village. Sy’s arresting use of brightness and color gives way to a desiccated village. The growing unease and desperation are palpable, and made all the more visceral as the starving cattle succumb to the oppressive weather. And all of that before death comes for the villagers.

These languid middle sequences in the village are some of the most powerful shots in the movie. Sy’s treatment of Banel and Adama is part Shakespeare, but there’s a healthy dose of Melville too. What starts out in happier times as a romantic refrain—Banel whispering their two names over and over—turns into an obsessive mania. Banel drops hints that her union with Adama might be fate… but it also might have been caused by more direct and nefarious human intervention.

Sy’s script, along with Mane’s performance, adds a welcome layer of complexity to the otherwise slight story. Banel can be frustrating, but also sympathetic and enchanting. (Adama never stood a chance.)

The film’s allegorical explorations of fate and destiny become more deeply felt as the village suffers. For Banel, too, it becomes unclear if her true love is Adama, or the idea of a different life.

Sy doesn’t offer clear answers. Only stellar performances that welcome the inscrutable, even haunting contradictions of love and life.

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A Quest for Vengeance

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Queen Rising

by Eva Fraser

Sometimes the most intriguing part of a mystery is deciphering the power at play in every interaction. Queen Rising establishes a precedent of this power for the main character, Madison (April Hale), who must relive her past and her memories of the “college slayings” in order to save her family home. 

The film alternates between past and present with flashbacks to Madison’s childhood and collegiate life. These flashbacks boost the film’s emotional intensity, director Princeton James collaborating with the cinematography to create parallels that transcend time. These flashbacks and the formulaic plot structure helped to create a mostly entertaining and suspenseful 90 minutes.

However, many aspects of Queen Rising didn’t quite click. The acting was mediocre. The characters and the film itself lacked depth. Even Madison, who we have to analyze because she is the protagonist, feels superficial. Queen Rising would have benefitted from more character perspectives. 

Madison talks to herself in a few scenes, all that dialogue simply delivering background information to give us some insight into her character. But everything is too straightforward and obvious. 

If the film is supposed to be a mystery, why could I predict the end from the very beginning?

Regardless of its predictability, the plot, although simple, provides a commentary on childhood trauma and the dangers of idolization. Queen Rising does have a point, but it gets muddled in the clichés, loopholes, and corniness of a soapy teen TV show.

James’s film, written by Allison Chaney and Henry E. Reaves III, has the makings of an intriguing film with its gritty premise and flashbacks, but falls short in some of the most basic of areas.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Sleep Paralysis in Horror

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Nightmares may be the source of all horror. There’s a theory that sleep paralysis may be to blame for history’s waking nightmares: ghosts, demons, specters. We dive into this horrifying complex and the horror films it has inspired.

5. The Night House (2020)

Director David Bruckner’s The Night House rests on a trusted horror foundation that’s adorned with several stylishly creepy fixtures. A remarkable as always Rebecca Hall plays the recently, startlingly widowed Beth whose grief combines with nightmares, sleuthing with doubt.

Though Beth’s neighbor (Vondie Curtis-Hall, always a pleasure) and best friend (Sarah Goldberg) both warn her not to fill the void in her life with “something dark,” the dark keeps calling. The more Beth digs into things Owen left behind, the more signs point to an unsettling secret life, and to the possibility that Owen may not have entirely moved on.

Beth’s sustained grief, and her indignation toward everyone who’s not Owen, carries an authenticity that gets us squarely behind Beth’s personal journey. And that pays dividends once the film relies on our belief in what Beth believes. Thanks to Hall, we end up buying in.

4. Insidious (2010)

Director James Wan and writer (and co-star) Leigh Whannell launched a second franchise with this clever, creepy, star-studded flick about a haunted family.

Patrick Wilson (who would become a Wan/Whannell staple) and Rose Byrne anchor the film as a married couple dealing with the peculiar coma-like state affecting their son, not to mention the weird noises affecting their house. The catch in this sleep paralysis film is that we are not with the dreamer. Instead, the dreamer is an innocent, helpless child, combining the hallucinatory imagery with child-in-peril tension.

But what makes this particular film so effective is that we get to go into The Further to reclaim the lost soul. It’s a risky move, but these filmmakers do what few are able to: they show us what we are afraid of.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Teens on suburban Elm St. share nightmares, and one by one, these teens are not waking up. Not that their disbelieving parents care. When Tina woke one night, her nightgown shredded by Freddie’s razor fingers, her super-classy mother admonished, “Tina, hon, you gotta cut your fingernails or you gotta stop that kind of dreamin’. One or the other.”

Depositing a boogieman in your dreams to create nightmares that will truly kill you was a genius concept by writer/director Craven because you can only stay awake for so long. It took everyone’s fear of nightmares to a more concrete level.

The film was sequeled to death, it suffers slightly from a low budget and even more from a synth-heavy score and weak FX that date it, but it’s still an effective shocker. That face that stretches through the wall is cool, the stretched out arms behind Tina are still scary. The nightmare images are apt, and the hopscotch chant and the vision of Freddie himself were not only refreshingly original but wildly creepy.

2. Borgman (2013)

Writer/director Alex van Warmerdam delivers a surreal, nightmarish, sometimes darkly comical fable guaranteed to keep you off balance. It is meticulously crafted and deliberately paced, a minefield of psychological torment.

van Warmerdam offsets his mysterious script with assured, thoughtful direction, buoyed by a fine ensemble cast and crisp, sometimes remarkable cinematography.

Like its title character, Borgman is unique and hypnotic, leaving you with so many different feelings you won’t be quite sure which one is right.

1. The Nightmare (2015)

An effective scary movie is one that haunts your dreams long after the credits roll. It’s that kind of impact that most horror buffs are seeking, but even the most ardent genre fan will hope out loud that Rodney Ascher’s documentary The Nightmare doesn’t follow them to sleep.

Sleep paralysis is the phenomenon that inspired Wes Craven to write A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a clear creative root for Insidious, Borgman, and scores of other horror movies. But it isn’t fiction. It’s a sometimes nightly horror show real people have to live with. And dig this – it sounds like it might be contagious.

We spend a great deal of time watching horror movies, and we cannot remember an instance in our lives that we considered turning off a film for fear that we would dream about it later. Until now.

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Feels Like Teen Spirit

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Inside Out 2

by George Wolf

It’s been nine years since Pixar’s Inside Out took us on that wonderful ride through a young girl’s feelings. Almost a decade, and I’m still not over what happened to Bing Bong.

Revisiting Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) when she hits her teen years seems like a natural exercise. And beyond that, Inside Out 2 delivers enough warmth, humor and insight to make the sequel feel downright necessary.

Riley’s now turning 13, and all seems status quo. Joy (Amy Poehler) keeps the reins on Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) as Riley gets set to head to the Bay Area hockey skills camp.

Then, overnight, the puberty alarm goes off. Oh Lord.

Director Kelsey Mann and writers Meg LeFauve (returning from part one) and Dave Holstein unleash this emotional onslaught with a mix of laughs and empathy that sets the perfect catalyst for another winning Pixar trip into a secret world.

And this world is more chaotic than ever. Anxiety (Maya Hawke) turns up with a plan to take over, leaning on Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui aka Boredom (Adèle Exarchopoulos) to steer Riley away from who she is and toward “who she needs to be”.

Will Riley abandon her BFF teammates Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu) to cozy up to star player Val (Lilimar) and the other older girls? Will Riley’s belief that “I’m a good person” crumble under doubt and desperation?

In his feature debut, Mann proves adept at showcasing what Pixar does best: meaningful stories for kids that are also emotional for parents. From the demo crew that arrives with puberty to the “sar-chasm”, this is another very clever romp through all that builds the sense of self. The film’s battle between joy and anxiety is relatable for all generations, and it’s filled with levels of creativity, humor, and visual flair that are undeniably fun.

And while it may not be Toy Story 4 funny, it is funny, especially when a leftover memory from Riley’s favorite kiddie show turns up to help our heroes out of “suppressed emotions” exile. His name is Pouchy (SNL’s James Austin Johnson). He’s a pouch. He’s hilarious. Trust me on this.

Could we now be moving closer to a Disney-fied treatment of Paul Almond’s Up series? Well, June Squibb’s charming cameo as Nostalgia just might be a peek at things to come. Either way, Inside Out 2 is a completely entertaining two-hour guide toward understanding – or appreciating – the messy emotions of growing up.

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Guilt Trip

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Treasure

by Hope Madden

“You have no idea.”

It’s the refrain forever punctuating the silence between father, Edek (Stephen Fry), and daughter, Ruthy (Lena Dunham), in co-writer/director Julie von Heinz’s family tragicomedy, Treasure.

Both Ruth and Edek are grieving the loss of Ruth’s mother, and each is dealing with that grief in their own way. Edek closes out anything unpleasant and focuses on the positive. Ruth books a trip to Poland to visit everything her Auschwitz survivor father has stricken from his memory.

The fact that von Heinz can mine any comedy from this family vacation is a great credit to her lowkey direction and, of course, to the neurotic charm of her leads.

Fry excels. He’s affable and dear, proud and protective, and—as dads tend to be—infuriating. It’s a great part and Fry expands to fill this larger-than-life presence.

Dunham has her work cut out for her as the hyper-intelligent emotional basket case grappling with the reality that she knows nothing of the nightmare of her parents’ past. The absence of her mother has left her feeling untethered; the trip offers a point of connection with a past that’s lost to her.

Auschwitz is a big image. In stronger moments, Treasure aches with a longing to understand why you are the way you are, a longing for connections to your past. It acknowledges that you may be built from your parents’ trauma, but that does not give you the right to own it.

In weaker moments, the film itself feels like trauma tourism.

Dunham does what she can to humanize this character, to examine Ruth’s grief, hollowing self-loathing, and need. But in the face of her father’s pain, this unholy exercise in picking scabs makes Ruth profoundly, unforgivably self-centered. Grief is necessarily selfish, but Ruth is obliviously sadistic.

Von Heinz walks a tightrope of tone. She taps into the reverberating echoes of war crimes right in the streets and apartments of Poland. She keeps it light but respectful, unveiling a heartbreaking reality most may not know.

There’s much to like in Treasure, but the film keeps siding with Ruthy without giving us any reason to do so ourselves.

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Limbo Time

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Coma

by George Wolf

Bursting with contrasts of art and ideas, Coma lands as a captivating time capsule of creativity, waiting to be savored by future viewers looking to understand a uniquely unsteady time.

Writer/director Bertrand Bonello casts his own daughter, Louise Labèque, as “L’adolescente,” a teenage girl trying to cope with life in lockdown. She FaceTime chats with friends and looks to YouTuber Patricia Coma (Julia Faure) for guidance on living in a present that has “come to a halt.”

Coma calmly and seductively stresses the need for achieving “limbo” – where we become “blank spaces waiting to be filled,” no longer needing to worry about making our own choices.

Bonello (The Beast) weaves together existential dread, dream and dreamlike narratives, and some black comedy with alternating live action and animation styles to create a hypnotic patchwork that probes a simple idea with utter fascination.

Among the understandable glut of lockdown films, this one stands out as a different animal indeed. The true effects of the pandemic – particularly on the young – may not be fully known for decades. Bonello wants us to realize that now, and Coma is an intriguing and insightful thought starter.

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Ropes and the Reins, Joy and the Pain

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Ride

by Rachel Willis

Modern-day cowboys are the focus of director Jake Allyn’s film, Ride.

Co-writing with Josh Plasse, Allyn has crafted an aching drama that explores the complicated relationships within a family struggling with several demons.

With his daughter ill, John Hawkins (C. Thomas Howell) engages in a desperate struggle to raise money to pay for treatments. His patience is thin as he fights with bureaucrats, hospital policy, and the outrageous amount of money needed to get his daughter the care she needs.

On top of the looming tragedy, Hawkins’s eldest son, Pete (Allyn, again, doing triple duty), has recently been released from prison. We’re given not-so-subtle hints as to what landed Pete in jail, but it’s compelling. Rounding out the family is the glorious Annabeth Gish, as the Hawkins’s family matriarch, Monica, who is also the town sheriff.  

A backdrop to the family’s personal struggles is the rodeo. The Hawkins family has a history in the sport, which offers us a glimpse into what a contemporary cowboy does in this world.

This is a tightly constructed film that has only one or two faults. Some of the drama treads too close to things we’ve seen before, but for the most part, things are handled in ways that speak to the rawness of a family in crisis.

It’s hard not to sympathize with John’s desperation. The money he needs is a crushing amount; that any family would be on the hook for such large sums to save a child is despicable. It’s not hard to understand the lengths a person will go to in their desire to do right by their family.

How far would you go to support your family? To save a child? It can be hard to imagine making some of the choices John makes, maybe impossible to imagine it. However, it’s not hard to imagine the desperation that leads a parent to make terrible choices.

It’s often crises that drive a family apart. Allyn skillfully raises the tension as Ride progresses. At times, the dialogue falters as we careen toward the climax, but it’s impossible not to be drawn in to this compelling, heartbreaking story of a family struggling to survive in a ruthless world.