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Recalled to Life
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
by Matt Weiner
A family haunted by the unexplained resurrection of their dead mother from a nearby river sounds like a good setup to a horror movie. But it works even better as a sparse, lushly filmed parable about environmental destruction and humanity’s relationship to the world that sustains us.
Chilean director Francisca Alegria’s feature film The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future sounds a clarion call to repair the destruction humans are doing to the world before it’s too late. It’s a message delivered urgently and unsubtly, but with moments of great beauty that make the warnings that much more stark.
When Magdalena (Mía Maestro) returns to life and walks from the polluted Cruces River to her family dairy farm, she shocks her now-aged husband Pablo (Benjamin Soto) so much that he ends up in the hospital. Magdalena’s extended family returns to the farm, and soon everyone has to confront the long-dead specter of Magdalena as they reckon with the holes her absence left on their lives.
And while the eco parable stays repetitively on message, the heart of the film is a more intimate examination of the inseparable connection between the environment and ourselves. The sense of loss that Magdalena left behind across generations of her family—and the trauma that continues to reverberate for her daughter Cecilia (Leonor Varela) as she carries this forward to her own children—mirrors the broader fight for environmental justice that we owe to people who come after us.
Grounding the film’s flights into magical realism is a riveting silent performance from Maestro as Magdalena. Maestro channels grief, wonder and even moments of sublime joy into the resurrected Magdalena.
The family’s initial response to seeing their reanimated matriarch ranges from love and excitement to the (perfectly understandable) horror, a note that Alegria brings out to great effect. In a different movie, Magdalena’s eerie wet footsteps through the house and across town would dog Cecilia and her father relentlessly.
It’s a confrontation that seems equally likely to end in catharsis or carnage. Alegria ratchets up the tension, as well as the environmental devastation, until the metaphorical dam breaks for Cecilia.
For a film whose songs into the future traffic in death and “the end” being here, the movie also holds out hope for an ending that has yet to be written. The film is agnostic on whether civilization writ large has earned our reprieve. But if a more connected world starts with just one family—then that’s a start.
There’s No Going Home
Joy Ride
by Hope Madden
Adele Lim’s Joy Ride puts the R in raunchy comedy, but beneath a by-the-numbers R-rated roadtrip is a smart, irreverent, confident tale about owning your identity.
The film opens on Day 1 of the friendship between Audrey & Lolo in the funniest comeuppance scene since the 1993 Thanksgiving pageant at Wednesday Addams’s summer camp. The two are fast friends, even though Audrey (Ashley Park) is ambitious, applied, and constantly proving herself while Lolo (Sherry Cola) makes sex positive art instead of working in her parents’ Chinese restaurant.
But Audrey is about to make partner and move to LA, while Lolo is still living in Audrey’s garage, getting high, making art and enjoying dick.
It’s a phrase you should definitely get used to.
Though Lolo is not the film’s centerpiece, the way the character upends stereotypes about women generally and about Asian women specifically is part of the film’s success. Lim and co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao use the beats of a familiar story to undermine its relatively misogynistic history. Joy Ride is more than just smart, racially savvy, sexually open and foul mouthed.
It’s funny.
Park is an excellent vehicle for both the core idea of claiming your identity and the necessary schmaltz at the heart of any raunchy comedy. But she is not carrying the comedic burden. Leave that to Cola and Audrey’s other two travel companions, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu, hilarious) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu, hello glorious!).
The commentary on microaggressions, aggressive aggression, all manner of racism, and glass ceilings feels honest, sometimes brave, often borderline (and joyously) lewd.
Don’t be confused. The plot itself is dumb as hell. It’s a roadtrip (well, it’s more of a globe trot) as the four pals travel through China to support Audrey as she lands the big client that will mean a big promotion. Hijinks do what they do best, they ensue.
Not every wild situation lands. Each emotional climax feels destined, obvious. But somehow, even well-worn tropes feel revolutionary when claimed by a filmmaking team (director, all writers, all leads) of nothing but Asian women.
Here Endeth
The Lesson
by Hope Madden
There is something elegantly old school about the slow burn literary mystery afoot in Alice Troughton’s feature directorial debut, The Lesson. Its overt, unyielding structure suggests a familiar, even predictable thriller.
However zealously screenwriter Alex MacKeith subscribes to the traditional three act story, theme stated on page 5 and all that, Troughton and a superb cast still manage to mesmerize you. You’re given every piece of evidence you will need, and yet you’ll wonder ceaselessly where it will all lead.
Troughton’s direction evokes a tense thriller, even though the story itself never feels as if danger’s around the corner. Still, the camera angles and shot choices – gorgeous though they are – leave you on edge. With her creeping camera and gorgeous location Troughton blurs the line between intellectual drama and mystery thriller.
Her stellar cast helps. Richard E. Grant plays renowned writer J.M. Sinclair, whose son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) is in the market for a tutor to help prepare him for Oxford’s entrance exams. Aspiring writer and massive Sinclair fan Liam (Daryl McCormack, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) gets the job.
Julie Delpy also stars as family matriarch Hélène, whose aloof demeanor strikes the perfect chord against Grant’s vibrance. It would be wrong to say Grant chews scenery, but you certainly can’t look away from him. A charming narcissist, viciously insecure and competitive, his Sinclair is a big presence, which allows the balance of characters to quietly observe, connive even.
McCormack, who was so impressive in the two-person revelation of Leo Grande, delivers another introspective and surprising performance. At times Liam seems to mirror Sinclair’s insecurity and artist’s fragility, but this is not that story.
The conclusion feels a little tidy, but the intricate ballet of character study and mystery that precedes it is so tight you’ll forgive the minor misstep.
Don’t Take Sex Advice from These Guys
The Crusades
by Christie Robb
Adolescent boys flex, fight, and run feral in Leo Milano’s high school comedy, The Crusades.
In a world devoid of parents, three friends—Leo (Rudy Pankow, Netflix’s Outer Banks), Sean (Khalil Everage, Netflix’s Cobra Kai), and Jack (Ryan Ashton, School for Boys) – are eager to establish themselves in the social hierarchy at their all-boys Catholic high school before the institution merges with the school from the inner city. The city boys are rumored to be bigger, stronger, and faster.
As the merger grows closer and with a school social mixer with the local all-girls school on the horizon, the main three boys are determined to have one last epic weekend together before the social landscape changes forever.
There are a lot of familiar tropes in this one—administrators with personal vendettas against students, kids trying to lose their virginity the night of the big dance, teachers with dubious moral authority, bloodthirsty bullies, Jackass-style pranks, kids fleeing through backyards…
That being said, the slapstick stupidity is sometimes pretty amusing, particularly Pankow’s increasingly broad wince and recoil from perceived attack. Which is good, because the movie is super violent. The main three are throwing punches, getting whacked in the nuts, or trying to stem their bleeding for the majority of the film. And when they aren’t, they are exchanging quips and dispensing dubious sex advice. (“Dong bags” are apparently reversible!)
Although there are girls and women in the cast, like Sean’s Girlfriend (Indiana Massara), Hot Teacher (Anna Maiche), and Girl Run Over by a Bike (Ashley Nicole Williams), they aren’t given much to do or any real character development. But then it’s not like any of the boys get character arcs either, despite the fact that the main three are fictionalized versions of co-writers Milano, Shaun Early, and Jack Hussar. (who also collaborate on the TV series School for Boys, which features many of the same characters from The Crusades.)
The flick is a lot of heteronormative, violent, masculine shenanigans with not much else to offer besides decent fight choreography and some quippy one-liners.
Best Horror Movies of the First Half of 2023
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
One of our favorite parts of the trauma of accepting that half the year is behind us is our therapy of celebrating so much great horror cinema! Did you forget these treasures? Already?! Well, here are (in alphabetical order) the ten best horror flicks so far this year.
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
An awful lot of people have reimagined Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in an awful lot of ways. What makes writer/director Bomani J. Story’s take, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, so effective is that it tackles a lot in very little time and handles all of it heartbreakingly well.
To say that Story situates Shelley’s tale in the context of drug violence would be to sell his film short. He’s moved the story from European castles and laboratories to the projects, where Vicaria’s (Laya DeLeon Hayes, stunning) mother fell victim to a drive-by shooting, her brother was shot to death on a drug deal gone wrong, and her father deals with his grief by using. But drugs are just part of the larger problem, the almost escapable, systemic and cyclical nature of violence and poverty.
Story’s chosen genre may feel slight, even campy, but the tropes belie some densely packed ideas, and there’s a current of empathy running through the film that not only separates this from other Frankenstein tales, but deepens the film’s genuine sense of tragedy.
The Blackening
Several friends from college (including Jay Pharaoh, Yvonne Orji, Sinqua Walls, Antoinette Robertson, and the film’s co-writer Dewayne Perkins) are reuniting at a remote cabin for a Juneteenth celebration. It isn’t long before they discover a talking blackface at the center of a board game called The Blackening (“probably runs on racism!”) and fall into a sadistic killer’s plan to pick them off one by one.
The game will test their knowledge of Black history and culture, and demand they sacrifice the friend they deem “the Blackest.” It’s a clever device that Perkins, co-writer Tracy Oliver and director Tim Story use to skewer both well-known horror tropes and well-worn identity politicking.
The old joke about Black people being the first to die in horror films is pretty well-worn, too, but don’t let that poster tagline convince you that the film has nothing new to say. The less “Blacker” these characters seem, the greater chance they have of surviving. That’s some fertile ground for social commentary, and what began as a viral comedy sketch lands on the screen as a refreshing new angle for a horror comedy.
Evil Dead Rise
Deadites hit the big city in Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, the latest instalment in the old Sam Raimi demon possession franchise. As was true with its predecessors, blood will rain, viscera will spew, chainsaws will bite, and the dead will most definitely rise.
We open, as usual, on a cabin. Despite the top-notch title sequence, though, this episode will not be a cabin-in-the-woods horror. Cronin, who’s credited with the script as well, takes the Necronomicon and all its secrets into an urban high rise to see what hell he can raise.
Cronin uses disorienting angels and shots throughout the film to beautifully bewildering effect. A fisheye-of-death through a peephole is just one of the film’s many horrifying highlights.
Huesera: The Bone Woman
Michelle Garza Cervera’s maternal nightmare is bright and decisive, pulling in common genre tropes only long enough to grant entrance to the territory of a central metaphor before casting them aside for something sinister, honest and honestly terrifying.
While it toes certain familiar ground – the gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby, for instance – what sets Huesera apart from other maternal horror is its deliberate untidiness. Cervera refuses to embrace the good mother/bad mother dichotomy and disregards the common cinematic journey of convincing a woman that all she really wants is to be a mom.
Huesera’s metaphor is brave and timely. Brave not only because of its LGBTQ themes but because of its motherhood themes. It’s a melancholy and necessary look at what you give up, what you kill.
Infinity Pool
Brandon Cronenberg + Mia Goth + Alexander Skarsgård … for a very specific set of people, the sum there is hell yes.
Riding our favorite wave in horror – that rich people are unspeakably diabolical – writer/director Cronenberg takes us on a strange journey through privilege, debauchery, entitlement, boredom, narcissism, psychotropic drugs and more in his trippy new flick, Infinity Pool.
Cronenberg’s ultimate concept is clearly, wildly his own, but moments sometimes call to mind ideas from last year’s Speak No Evil, as well as Society, Kill List, Hour of the Wolf, and A Serbian Film (no, not that part). Still, the film never feels borrowed. Uncomfortable, yes. Borrowed? No.
Influencer
Kurtis David Harder’s approach to influencer horror leans Neo-noir thriller as the cold and calculating CW (Cassandra Naud – outstanding) spins a dangerous web for an unsuspecting social butterfly.
Harder and cinematographer David Schuurman create an absolutely gorgeous pot for boiling this mystery. From atop deserted island beaches to below crystal clear waters and inside lavish vacation homes, Harder’s nimble camera and visual aesthetics reinforce the notion that pretty pictures don’t always tell the whole story.
With sharp dialogue, skillful plotting and simmering dread, Influencer is plenty worthy of that “Like” button.
Malum
Equal parts Assault on Precinct 13 and The Shining by way of Charles Manson, Anthony DiBlasi’s Malum is a quick, mean, mad look into the abyss.
DiBlasi is reimagining his own 2014 flick Last Shift, although it feels more like a riff on Carpenter’s 1976 Precinct 13 than anything. Regardless, what the filmmaker does is confine the audience along with our hero in a diabolical funhouse.
Malum gets nuts, exactly as it should. Though it never feels genuinely unique, it manages to avoid feeling derivative because of DiBlasi’s commitment to the grisly madness afoot. The result is a solid, blood soaked bit of genre entertainment fully worthy of your 92 minutes.
M3GAN
Hilarious. Gerard Johnstone – whose 2014 horror gem Housebound is a must see – displays a sly instinct for humor in a film that understands what’s creepy about dolls and toxic relationships.
Allison Williams is solid as the workaholic who just wasn’t cut out to be a parent. That would be fine, except her orphaned niece could really use a parent, not an AI caregiver whose rushed-to-production programming and unseemly backstory make her dangerous in, let’s be honest, a pretty fun way.
You remember that trailer. We could have used more dancing, but when M3GAN plays “Toy Soldiers” on the piano, we were already hooked.
Renfield
They totally made a movie with a very saucy Nic Cage as Dracula. And a saucy Nic Cage is the best Nic Cage.
There’s at least one bloody toe in waters that send up rom-coms, satirize narcissistic relationships and homage a classic horror character while it’s also modernizing the themes that built him.
But experiencing Count Nicula alone is worth it. Plus, Nicholas Hoult is perfect as the put-upon sad boy with access to anti-hero superpowers and Awkwafina can wring plenty of humor from simply telling a guy named Kyle to F-off.
Renfield might be bloodier than you expect, but it’s just as much fun as you’re hoping for. Call it bloody good fun.
Skinamarink
There’s probably some version of this nightmare in your past. You were just a kid, separated from your parents and trying in vain to reach them or call out for help, or maybe just escape.
Remember how scared you were? Director Kyle Edward Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae do, and they twist that knife again and again for 100 minutes of dark, disorienting dread.
Cinematography and sound design are intertwined in an analog, cathode-ray aesthetic that recalls vintage, grainy VHS. Two children whisper to each other (“Where do you think Dad is? I don’t know.”) as they wander from room to room, with Ball’s camera never allowing you one second of relief.
Screening Room: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, Chile ’76, Blue Jean & More
Let You Down When You Need Them
Blue Jean
by Hope Madden
The past and present look a little too similar in writer/director Georgia Oakley’s quietly profound drama, Blue Jean.
This is true, regardless of the spot-on period detail. Jean (Rosey McEwen) teaches high school PE in Thatcher-era London. Protests over the conservative party’s push to enshrine anti-LGBTQ+ laws echo from radio stations and TV sets in the faculty lounge, greeted with reactions from colleagues that confirm Jean’s instinct to stay closeted.
McEwen’s riveting performance is almost entirely internal. A gesture, a breath, a blink holds meaning. And tears – forget it. Jean is too tightly wound, trying so hard to disappear, to draw no attention to herself so she can slip through her days unnoticed. But why did she get into teaching in the first place?
Without a hint of a heavy hand, Oakley brings us around to that question. She didn’t do it because she didn’t want to leave an impression. No one chooses to spend their days surrounded by adolescents, of all things, if they don’t want to offer some kind of value, provide some kind of guidance toward adulthood.
Jean doesn’t want to be a hero, but there comes a moment when she has to reckon with whether or not she’s willing to be a villain.
McEwen’s isn’t the only impressive performance. A vibrant and endlessly lovable Kerry Hayes makes love interest Viv a buoyant but levelheaded surprise. Young Lucy Halliday is raw vulnerability as Lois, balanced beautifully by the layered, roiling emotion of Lydia Page’s Siobhan.
It’s stunning that this is Oakley’s feature debut. The patient pacing pays off with a fully earned climax and not one note rings false. Every moment aches of heartbreak, but that only makes the pure joy of the final act that much more beautiful. Like the best queer cinema, Blue Jean makes the political personal. But even in the most oppressive climate, it is freedom.
Narco-Lepsy
Confidential Informant
by Daniel Baldwin
Scenario: You’re an ex-soldier turned cop. You are drowning in debt. You have a terminal medical condition that your benefits won’t properly cover. You’re worried that once your sickness claims you, you’ll leave your family destitute. You know that your job pays out handsomely if you are killed in the line of duty. What do you do?
This is the central hook of Confidential Informant, a crime thriller that also happens to be the first Mel Gibson geezer teaser of 2023. Dominic Purcell and Nick Stahl star as two dirty narcotics officers who magically only use corruption to the “benefit” of society and not themselves. They’ll bust down doors without warrants and conjure up whatever they need to make their reports look clean on the surface in an effort to take down the “bad guys”, but never bend the rules to help themselves out. Their boss (Mel Gibson) willingly turns a blind eye to all of it, again with no personal kickback, all for the good of mankind. Yeah, sure.
Purcell’s narco cop is dying, and he needs a way out that will best help his family. He and Stahl concoct a plan with a close friend/confidential informant (Erik Valdez) of theirs to do just that. Things go haywire, and they end up with an internal affairs investigator (Russell Richardson) on their tail. Can the lie be maintained, or will he discover the truth?
We’ve seen more than a few action thrillers tackle benefits issues for soldiers over the past half dozen years. Films like Den of Thieves, Triple Frontier, Wrath of Man, etc. all showcase how poorly we take care of our troops, leading them – at least in these tales – to lives of crime just to pay the bills. To now do the same for corrupt cops is ballsy, especially in today’s political climate. That’s not to say that it cannot be done, as Joe Carnahan’s brilliant Narc accomplished it two decades ago. This is no Narc.
Confidential Informant wastes a good cast (particularly Kate Bosworth in a beyond thankless wife role) on a mess of a script that tries its hardest to be both a neo-noir and a message film but fails at both. The writing simply isn’t up to the task of juggling these two ideas, so the whole thing buckles under the weight of its own ambitions. Stahl does what he can as the lead and Gibson tries his best in what is actually a small supporting role, but it’s not enough to compensate for a weak script and stiff dialogue. This snooze is for die-hards – sorry, lethal weapons – only.
Make the Canadian World Go Round
Montreal Girls
by Rachel Willis
A man searching for his way in life is the subject of director Patricia Chica’s character study, Montreal Girls.
Though he arrives in Montreal to enroll in a pre-med program, it’s immediately clear that medicine is not a path Ramy (Hakim Brahimi) has chosen for himself. It’s an honor to study medicine at the university to which he has been accepted, but Ramy’s true passion is poetry.
Chica sets up a nice familial relationship for Ramy, establishing early that he is close with both his uncle (Manuel Tadros) and cousin, Tamer (Jade Hassouné). Tamer – a singer in a local punk band – introduces Ramy to the two women who will occupy most of his time in Montreal – Desiree (Jasmina Parent) and Yaz (Sana Asad).
Most of the film follows Ramy as he gets to know the women, all while reflecting on the last moments he spent with his mother before leaving for university. Her passing has had a profound impact on Ramy, and this is perhaps why he tries to cling so hard to the elusive Yaz.
While Desiree is more accessible, Ramy struggles to find his way with both women. It’s a mirror for the ways he struggles with his choice to study medicine. One offers safety and security; the other, passion and uncertainty.
While on the surface, it seems the Montreal girls are the driving influence behind Ramy’s choices, everything he does comes back around to the mother he has lost. Through brief scenes, we can sense the intimate relationship between Mother and Son.
At times, the film falls victim to clichés, but tenderness adds a layer of sincerity to those clichés. The film never feels trite, even while it treads familiar ground.
While most of the characters come to life, Yaz is relatively flat. Though this is how the character wants it – the persona she has created for herself – we never feel connected to her in a meaningful way. But this is part of the lesson Ramy learns as he navigates his new life. There are some people who will inspire you, even while they remain elusive. While this works to deepen Ramy’s character, it does leave a little to be desired for the audience.
Most of what the film does works to serve its purpose. The few moments where it stumbles almost feel necessary as it accurately reflects Ramy’s world.
