Screening Room: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Flamin’ Hot, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Daliland & More
Tag Archives: movie reviews
A Sin Called Victory
Brooklyn 45
by Hope Madden
A timely deconstruction of patriotism as convenient excuse for violence – xenophobia, homophobia, you name it – filmmaker Ted Geoghegan’s latest genre film costumes a contemporary message in WWII army greens.
Brooklyn 45 spends a single, specific evening with a handful of war buddies. It is Christmas Eve. The war has just ended. Lt. Col. Clive “Hock” Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden) probably shouldn’t be alone for Christmas. He’s been lost in grief since his wife Suzy took her own life on Thanksgiving, raving about Nazi spies in the building. So, pals Mjr. Archibald Stanton (Jeremy Holm, The Ranger), Mjr. Paul DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington), master interrogator Marla Sheridan (Anne Ramsay) and her husband, Pentagon pencil pusher Bob (Ron E. Rains) head to Hock’s Brooklyn apartment to make merry.
What they don’t expect is a séance, but to their surprise, that’s what they get. It doesn’t go well. Lights flicker, candles light themselves, there’s ectoplasm, phantasmic voices – and an unsettling knocking in the closet.
Geoghegan’s crafted a highly theatrical, even stagey, production. Almost exclusively set on a single space, as the full cast is trapped in Hock’s dining room for nearly the film’s full 92-minute run time, the movie could easily have taken shape as a stage play. Or, given the spot-on era the filmmaker creates, it could have succeeded as a radio play. The theatricality works, even when the dialog is occasionally overwritten or expected to deliver too much exposition.
The success comes in equal parts from fine performances and Goeghegan’s nimble thematic work. By pressing these people – war heroes of the “greatest generation” – hard enough, he not only depicts an all-too-familiar slippery slope to self-justified violence, but chips away at a whitewashed American history.
Ramsay is particularly impressive, her performance layered and authentic despite the movie’s theatricality. Kristina Klebe – a surprise guest – is a bit hamstrung with the film’s most stilted dialog, but she and Ramsay share an unsettling chemistry that heightens tension.
Goeghegan delivers some jump scares and some gore, but what his film finds scariest is what lies in a beating human heart.
The Loneliest Number
Aloners
by Rachel Willis
Writer/director Hong Sung-eun offers a contemplative portrait of solitude and loneliness in her film, Aloners.
Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, has dinner and goes to bed. This is her life on repeat. She eats at the same restaurant each lunch break. Her interactions with other people revolve around chit-chat with her supervisor on smoke breaks, the occasional exchange with a neighbor, and countless callers in the call center where she works.
Otherwise, Jina’s constant companion is a screen. Earbuds in, she walks, rides the bus, eats, and moves through her day connected to a screen. She even sleeps with the TV on.
Several things happen to rattle Jina’s solitary existence. She’s tasked with training a new employee in hopes of keeping the turnover rate down at her job; her father gets in touch with her regarding a lawyer’s visit; and a neighbor in her apartment building dies.
It’s Jina’s father (Park Jeong-hak) who tries hardest to connect, though her new colleague Sujin (Jeong Da-eun) also attempts to engage her. Rather than take her father’s calls, she watches him through a home video camera set up in his living room. When her colleague brings her coffee, she wordlessly accepts.
This is a slow film, but a certain sadness and apathy hangs over Jina. Gong is phenomenal at displaying the anxiety that comes with human interaction, and her expressionless face carries more weight than any dialogue. It’s hard to say what, if anything, Jing feels.
And while there isn’t much action, the film is never boring. The character study is an affecting examination on how being alone can change a person. Was Jing always like this or has she learned to shut down as a result of her isolation? Can she truly be happy on her own so much of her life?
The film takes place before the pandemic, for a post-pandemic audience Aloners is a slow, striking film that resonates deeply.
Be My Frankenstein
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
by Hope Madden
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.
Laya DeLeon Hayes is Vicaria, a gifted student whose heart and brains overtake her wisdom when she decides that death itself is the disease that must be cured, and that she’s the one to cure it. It was Dr. Frankenstein’s vanity that pushed him to discover the secret to life itself. For Vicaria, the reason is far more tragic, but the result is the same.
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 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.
One of the reasons the Frankenstein monster is so effective so often is that he is tragically monstrous. He is violent through no real fault of his own but as a reaction to an environment that hates him, treats him with cruelty, fear and malice. We simultaneously root for and against this monster.
The trick is to make us root for the creator, and DeLeon Hayes delivers a layered, touching performance that accomplishes this. Vicaria is so young, so hopeful, and so full of fight that we forgive her short sightedness and her immediate (and understandable) fear. Vicaria’s missteps are understandable because she’s a kid, and her heart’s in the right place, which is why she keeps making the worst decisions. It’s a powerfully compelling performance.
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.
Not every performance is as strong as DeLeon Hayes’s, and sometimes Story’s dialog is asked to carry too much historical significance. But there’s no denying the power he wrung from the source material.
Masculinity Is a Spectrum
All Man: The International Male Story
by Daniel Baldwin
In 1970, former Air Force pilot Gene Burkard launched a mail-order fashion catalog that would ultimately help revolutionize post-‘60s men’s attire: International Male. His goal was to craft and sell clothing to men – queer and straight alike – that moved beyond the drabber business and business-casual attires of post-World War II America. He succeeded.
All Man lays out the history of both Gene Burkard’s life and his magazine creation, from its beginnings to its ultimate closure in the late-2000s. Nary a stone is unturned, as the documentary speaks to Burkard, his business partners, designers, models, photographers, sales reps, store managers, office workers, and more than a few subscribers – including those who are now celebrities (such as narrator Matt Bomer).
The magazine’s journey runs hand in hand with that of the LGBTQIA+ community’s history in America, so the fact that none of these macro issues are overlooked is a major positive. So too are the more personal issues tied to the magazine, such as gay men of all types being able to use the magazine as an outlet for their fantasies and their own personal self-expression through fashion across multiple decades where being out and proud was less culturally acceptable than it is today. This also holds true for straight men, who – through the changes in fashion pioneered within the magazine – were also able to express themselves with more colorful and dynamic clothing than just the suits, slacks, and dress shirts that had a stranglehold on men’s styles in post-war America.
Documentarians Bryan Darling and Jesse Finlay Reed have crafted a thoroughly engaging and deeply informative piece of filmmaking that is well worth seeing, regardless of your background in life. All Man focuses on a piece of history that many may not be aware of – very likely, given that the publication’s current Wikipedia page is shockingly shorter than this review.
The above title “Masculinity is a spectrum” comes from a statement in the film and it couldn’t be more accurate. It IS a spectrum and we all can choose how we want to express ourselves on that spectrum, in part because of the work done by the people behind this magazine.
Screening Room: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Boogeyman, Shooting Stars, Esme My Love & More
Spider-Animania
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
by Hope Madden
Do you remember how cool Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was? It was the coolest! A film that celebrated everything a comic book film could be, everything a hero could be, and everything a cartoon could be.
Expect all that again as Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) returns, this time sharing screentime and character arc almost 50/50 with Spider-Woman Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who starts us off with her own troubled tale of balancing great responsibility with great power. Things get so bad she has to abandon this universe, and her one real friend.
That friend has his own troubles. Mr. and Mrs. Morales (do not call them by their first names) know Miles is keeping something from them, a problem that’s only exacerbated by some goofy villain-of-the-week (Jason Schwartzman, priceless).
Or is Miles taking The Spot less seriously than he should?
He is! No matter, he gets to help Gwen and bunches of other (often hilarious) Spider-Men (and -Women and -Cats and -Dinosaurs). But it all goes to hell in a riotous celebration of animated style and spot-on writing that simultaneously tease and embrace comic book lore.
Schwartzman is not the only killer new talent crawling the web. Daniel Kaluuya lends his voice to the outstanding punk rock Spider-Man, Hobie; Issa Rae is the badass on wheels Jessica Drew; Karan Soni voices the huggable Pavitr, or Spider-Man India. Rachel Dratch plays essentially an animated version of herself as Miles’s high school principal, and the great Oscar Isaac delivers all the serious lines as Spider-Man Miguel O’Hara. Add in the returning Brian Tyree-Henry, Luna Lauren Velez and Mahershala Ali, and that is a star-studded lineup. Studs aplenty!
That wattage is almost outshone by the animation. Every conceivable style, melding one scene to the next, bringing conflict, love and heroism to startling, vivid, utterly gorgeous life.
Writers Phil Lords and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, The Mitchells vs. the Machines) return, bringing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings writer Dave Callaham along for the sequel. Their story is wild but never illogical, delivering a heady balance of quantum physics, Jungian psychology and pop culture homages while rarely feeling like a self-congratulatory explosion of capitalism. Heart strings are tugged, and it helps if you’ve seen the previous installment. (If you haven’t, that’s on you, man. Rectify that situation immediately.)
If there is a drawback (and judging the reaction of some of the youngsters in my screening, there may be), it’s that Across the Spider-Verse is a cliffhanger. If you’re cool with an amazing second act in a three-story arc (The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers), you’ll probably be OK with it. Maybe warn your kids, but don’t let it dissuade you from taking in this animated glory on the biggest screen you can find.
Diary of a Mad Woman
The Attachment Diaries
by Hope Madden
Tell me you’re having a bad day without telling me you’re having a bad day.
Argentinian filmmaker Valentin Javier Diment knows how to articulate desperation with nothing more onscreen than a sidewalk, heavy rain, and a broken heel. From there, The Attachment Diaries sets up an eerie power dynamic between forlorn Carla (Jimena Anganuzzi) – pregnant, alone, very wet and in need of help – and Irina (Lola Berthet).
It’s 1970-something. Irina is a doctor willing to perform abortions, but Carla, is too far along. If she’s willing, Carla can stay with Irina, give birth and make some money with an arranged adoption.
Diment invests time in both characters, neither of whom is quite what she seems. The more we learn about each the less we really know, but trouble’s brewing, that’s for sure. And the greater the intrigue, the stranger the film.
The filmmaker wades hip deep into triggers: abortion, self-harm, sexual assault. And his approach unsentimental. No, it is blunt. Nothing is sacred, or to be honest, even interesting enough for Irina’s thoughtful consideration. Trauma and mental health are not treated delicately, either. No kid gloves, but loads of intentionality – Carla is often as shocked by Irina’s blasé attitude as we are, and Carla’s no delicate flower.
Berthet and Anganuzzi deliver everything a moviegoer needs from the heroes and villains of this twisted tale. Berthet is the hard candy shell to Anganuzzi’s messy middle, and neither character is easy to root for. But together, their almost hostile yet somehow tender chemistry fuels the human madness developing in the film.
Flashes of Hitchcock and Almodovar (that’s a fun pairing!) flavor the film’s aesthetic and movement, Diment blending inspiration with his own impeccable sense of detail to create a film full of intensity, eccentricity and style.
The filmmaker sets up gorgeous shots, both to keep you off balance and for the sheer odd beauty of them. His use of color is also fascinating. At first it feels a little too on-the-nose, but the truth is that, once again, he’s underscoring a change in the power dynamic.
The escalating lunacy nearly tips to melodrama or even parody, but the duo at the center of it all manages to hold it all together somehow. The Attachment Diaries is a dark, bizarre mystery thriller that flirts with B-movie status in a way that somehow makes the experience richer than it had any real right to be.
The Politics of Sin
Padre Pio
by Brandon Thomas
Shortly after the end of the first World War, a priest named Padre Pio (Shia LaBeouf) finds himself suffering an enormous crisis of faith. Having had health issues that kept him from the front lines of the war, Pio’s guilt is slowly consuming him.
Outside the walls of the monastery, a less internal battle is brewing. Many townspeople, upset with fascist landowners and their own working conditions, are drawn to the rising Socialist Party. They see the town’s first free election as a way to make their voices heard. When the old rulers see the tide turning against them, violence becomes their only way of holding onto power.
Director Abel Ferrara made a name for himself by directing some of the most notable exploitation movies of the late ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s. Films like Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant were cultural firestarters in their day, and might even draw the ire of Film Twitter in the present should it stumble upon those seedy gems. However, in the latter half of his career, Ferrara has been drawn to more contemplative works. Pasolini, Tommaso, and Siberia show the filmmaker at his most introspective. Instead of trying to provoke an audience with violence and graphic sex, Ferrara is now trying to get them to look inward through quiet but haunted protagonists.
Padre Pio is Ferrara’s attempt to subtly blend religion and politics, though neither topic is given its due. Unlike Paul Schrader’s more recent First Reformed, Ferrara’s film is far too disjointed and muddled to prove his own point. The religious fervor found in LaBeouf’s scenes never coherently connects with the film’s political half. There are hints at Ferrara’s initial intentions, but unfortunately very little of that appears on screen.
LaBeouf’s casting is a major blunder. The actor has turned in very good work in movies like The Peanut Butter Falcon, Fury, and American Honey, but as an iconic Italian priest, he is horribly miscast. While the entirety of the film is in English, the bulk of the cast is made up of Italian and other European actors. LaBeouf’s distracting American accent drags any discerning viewer out of the film immediately. His inclusion, and the messiness of the overall storytelling, makes Padre Pio feel like a bad movie-within-a-movie from an Apatow comedy.
Ferrara’s ideas here are compelling and might’ve worked in movies of their own. When crammed together as competing – not complementary – narratives, the film never finds its footing and feels like a slog even at a reasonable 1 hour and 44 minutes.
Growing Pains
Falcon Lake
by Hope Madden
Co-writer/director Charlotte Le Bon crafts a melancholy poem to that fleeting moment of the last real summer of your childhood with her moody coming-of-age tale Falcon Lake.
Thirteen (almost 14) year-old Bastien (Joseh Engel) and his family go to visit friends on a lake for a couple of weeks over the summer. Bastien and his little brother will room with Chloe (Sara Montpetit), two years older, gorgeous, a little weird, a little bored. As Bastien tags along, Chloe is the one we see playing tug of war with adulthood.
The summer orbits these two kids, navigating the vanishing moments of childhood, blinking into the blinding future. Le Bon captures these moments perfectly, aided immeasurably by two truly wonderful performances.
Montpetit unveils something vulnerable beneath Chloe’s capricious behavior. But it’s Engel who mesmerizes. His smile, genuine as it can be, is uplifting and heartbreaking in equal measure. He punctuates a hauntingly quiet performance with bursts of joy, silliness and tenderness that make Bastien achingly lovable. But more than that, he’s authentic. As lovely and lyrical as Falcon Lake can be, rather than crafting a romantic nostalgia about innocence lost, Le Bon delivers a slice of life.
Cinematographer Kristof Brandl’s camera evokes the mood, lonesome silhouettes, isolating crowds, awkward intimacy. Le Bon exhibits a delicate if controlled touch to her tale of young love. Few topics are more oft tread in cinema, on stage, in print or in song. But Falcon Lake, though its honesty gives it the feel of familiarity, never seems tired or worn.
