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Family Jewels

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Ocean’s 8

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

More than 15 years ago, Steven Soderbergh recast the Rat Pack, pointing out a set of Hollywood A-listers led by George Clooney who were as stylish and cool as Sinatra and the fellas.

Three films later (four, if you count Soderbergh’s hillbilly version Logan Lucky, and you should) and the Ocean family is drawn once again to the big payoff.

This time it’s Danny Ocean’s sister Deb (Sandra Bullock). A life of crime runs in the family, it seems. Fresh from incarceration, Deb is looking to execute the con she’s been fine tuning over the last 5 years in lockdown.

What Debbie needs is a team, and she knows what kind.

“A ‘him’ gets noticed. A ‘her’ gets ignored.”

That’s a line well-placed and well-played, and though the film seems awfully familiar from the jump, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The music bumpers, throwback scene segues, strategy meetings and comfortable pacing set the cool vibe, and Ocean’s 8 is cheeky enough in its outright impersonation of the previous installments to shrug off feeling derivative. Instead, it comes off as second class, which may be more disappointing.

Though director Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) can crib the style—his cast (including Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna and a spunky Awkwafina) can’t generate the same chemistry. No one does a bad job, far from it, but Ocean’s 8 lacks the overlapping dialogue and easy rapport of earlier efforts. They have the talent, they just don’t have the material.

Anne Hathaway is the real thief in this caper, stealing every scene with a fun and funny send-up of the Hollywood diva persona (including her own). James Corden, popping in as a fraud expert investigating the theft of a multi-million dollar Cartier necklace during the Met Gala, brightens up the third act as well with his fresh perspective and savvy delivery.

Otherwise, the side characters are neither as meaty or as interesting as in previous franchise efforts. Surprisingly it’s Blanchett who disappoints most. Too dialed down, her Lou lacks the color and definition to be effective as Debbie’s second banana, and Blanchett’s casual greatness feels wasted.

The best of the Ocean’s films rely on sharp characterizations and sharper sleight of hand. You believe you’re watching the con unfold only to find that …whaat?….the real heist was somewhere you weren’t looking. It is you who’s been conned.

While 8 follows that formula it succeeds only to a degree, its script simply not crisp enough to charm you into buying all in. The con itself is not believably intricate and Ross, who co-wrote the screenplay with Olivia Milch, cops out in act three with heavy exposition.

But hey, heist movies are fun, and movies with this much star power are fun. Ergo, Ocean’s 8 is a fun time at the movies.

Glitzy, forgettable fun.

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Men and Monsters

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Mary Shelley

by Hope Madden

Mary Shelley was a fascinating person. She was the offspring of a radical feminist, sure. Still, what fire it must have taken to abandon societal pressures at the time in favor of a scandalous relationship with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Of course, she was 16 and 16-year-olds make poor decisions.

Mary famously went on to outdo both her poet/philosopher husband and his poet/lover Lord Byron when, during a rainy spell in their summer together, they took part in a challenge to write a ghost story.

What then, did Byron or Percy Shelley write? Who can recall? But we do remember Mary’s.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin penned Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus when she was 18 years old.

Such a life story would seem like fertile ground for a stirring biopic.

We’ll have to settle for Haiffa Al-Monsour’s stiff and middling effort, Mary Shelley.

Elle Fanning portrays Mary, a melancholy rebel who has yet to find her literary inspiration or her voice. She does become muse to Shelley (Douglas Booth), a handsome scoundrel more opportunistic than idealistic.

The film hopes to encapsulate the abandonment, longing and loneliness that fueled the creation of Mary Shelley’s novel, and more directly, her creature. But there is no life in these scenes—none of the gumption that must have fueled Mary’s early decisions.

Fanning’s listless performance casts an awfully prim shadow. She’s surrounded by perfectly reasonable if somewhat anemic turns by her supporting cast. All this subdued hush only makes Tom Sturridge’s bluster that much more, easily stealing scenes as the lothario, Byron.

Al-Monsour seems unsure of her intent. She struggles to illustrate the power struggle between male and female inside this free-loving environment. But more than anything, she fails to find any kind of spark or passion to propel her central character or her film.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of June 4

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An abundance of stay-cool-indoors options this week in home entertainment. If you missed the spectacular Thoroughbreds, now is your chance to remedy that. If you believed the trash talk about A Wrinkle in Time, you can undo that nonsense now, too. The rest—meh—but Hurricane Heist at least delivers what it promises.

Click the film title for the full review.

Thoroughbreds

A Wrinkle in Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZ56rcWwRQ

Hurricane Heist

Gringo

Death Wish

Fright Club

Fright Club: Best Horror Endings, Part 2

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Thanks to S.A. Bradley of Hellbent for Horror for joining us to finish out our look at the best endings in horror movie history. A tough list to finalize, for sure, this one hits on some of the most brutal and memorable parting shots on film.

5. Kill List (2011)

Ben Wheatley’s diabolical 2011 indie slides from grim Brit crime thriller into something far more sinister.

Hitman Jay (a volcanic Neil Maskell) is wary to take another job after the botched Kiev assignment, but his bank account is empty and his wife Shel (an also eruptive MyAnna Buring) has become vocally impatient about carrying the financial load. But this new gig proves to be seriously weird.

The final act offers something simultaneously fitting and surprising. Wheatley’s climax recalls a couple of other horror films, but what he does with the elements is utterly and bewilderingly his own.

4. The Mist (2007)

If there’s one thing a successful Stephen King adaptation needs, it’s a writer/director who knows how to end a story. For all of King’s many strengths, ending his tale is no a strong suit.

Frank Darabont has certainly proven to have a knack for King’s source material, having helmed among the most successful and beloved films based on King’s books. But with The Mist, he outdid himself.

Thomas Jane plays a writer who, along with his young son, finds himself trapped in a grocery store when an opening in the space/time continuum allows giant, bloodthirsty creatures into New England. What begins as a wonderful creature feature turns into a terrifying Lord of the Flies before setting us up with a gut punch of utter, devastating perfection in a horror film ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktqNNsVJhUE

3. Carrie (1976)

Another excellent King adaptation, Brian De Palma’s Carrie streamlines King’s sprawling ending to focus our attention where it will do the most damage.

And yes, the entirety of Act 3 is magnificent, but De Palma started something with those final, lingering images. He goes back to the cheese-cloth fuzziness of the earliest moments of the film as Sue Snell (this is really all your fault, Sue Snell!) glows with goodness and self-sacrifice. Only she truly loved poor, misunderstood Carrie.

Sue carries white flowers to the unholy ground where Carrie White lies.

And BLAM! De Palma has invented a new and forever mimicked horror movie ending.

2. Martyrs (2008)

Holy shit. This film is a brilliant and brutal test of endurance.

Writer/director Pascal Laugier’s mystifying sense of misdirection shares the aching, dysfunctional love of two best friends as one descends into madness. But that is not the point.

A couple of abrupt story turns later and we learn the point of the film and the film’s title. That’s about the time we meet Mademoiselle (Cahterine Begin, perfect).

And after ninety minutes of dread and terror, the climax Pascal and Mademoiselle have in store for you may not be satisfying, but it is perfect.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

From the brightly lit opening cemetery sequence to the paranoid power struggle in the house to the devastating closing montage, Night of the Living Dead teems with the racial, sexual and political tensions of its time. An unsettlingly relevant George A. Romero knew how to push societal panic buttons.

As the first film of its kind, the lasting impact of this picture on horror cinema is hard to overstate. His inventive imagination created the genre and the monster from the ground up.

Still, the shrill sense of confinement, the danger of one inmate turning on another, and the unthinkable transformation going on in the cellar build to a startling climax – one that utterly upends expectations – followed by the kind of absolutely genius ending that guarantees the film’s eternal position in the annals of horror cinema.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6IDNqHuHmE

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Captive

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Beast

by Hope Madden

An outsider love story, a chilly whodunit, a psychological thriller—Beast is all and none of these.

This remarkably assured first feature from writer/director Mark Pearce keeps its focus on Moll (Jessie Buckley), the highly-scrutinized woman living with her parents in a small island community.

We open serenely enough on an angelic church choir rehearsing, a peace that’s harshly broken by the choir leader’s remark: I need more from you, Moll.

Geraldine James is haughty Hilary Huntington, the choirmaster; Moll is her grown daughter.

Soon a rugged stranger draws Moll out of her unhappy life, makes her feel awake and seen. She is destined to love this boy regardless of the string of missing girls in her village, regardless of his shady past, and in spite of the warnings of the smothering community.

Pearce’s skills keep you entranced, no matter the tropes he so easily picks up, throws off or reinvents. Sunlight, shadow, earth, sea—all these serve the visual storyteller’s purpose, while angles and frames keep you off kilter as you puzzle through the tale at hand.

You’re as invested, cautious and curious as Moll, but it’s actually Buckley’s performance—her depiction of Moll’s internal conflict—that is the most compelling and mysterious. As Moll changes demeanor, exploring her own identity becomes more important than determining her lover’s.

Johnny Flynn impresses as well as the local no-account presumed guilty, sharing a misfit chemistry with Moll that is both primal and tender. Tenderness is not what she’s used to from her severe mother, an epic James.

Together with the washed out colors of the characters’ bleak world, the film offers a harsh backdrop for Moll’s dizzying grasp on her own reality. The conflict, duality and self-discovery in Beast cannot help but draw you in, asking you about your own inner beast.

Without hitting a single false note, no matter the choir leader’s opinion, Buckley ushers us through a moral quagmire with a fire and authenticity that is gorgeous to behold.

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Checking Out

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Always at the Carlyle

by Rachel Willis

There are a few directions a film can take when focusing on a hotel with the kind of history as the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. A historical retrospective of its place in New York would have cemented the hotel as one of the city’s vibrant hearts. A simple history of the hotel itself and its early struggles after opening during the Great Depression and its rise to prominence could have proved an interesting subject if explored.

However, director Matthew Miele focuses his documentary, Always at the Carlyle, on the shallowest of subjects—the hotel’s many famous guests.

A good chunk of the film feels like a promotional advertisement. Interviews with hotel staff highlight the hotel’s charms without diving too deeply into those charms. One of the staff was given the opportunity to stay in the room that Princess Diana frequented on her visits to New York. When asked by Miele if the room’s $10,000 per night fee is worth it, she says yes. It’s hard to imagine her saying anything else.

The rest of the film is interviews with its rich and famous guests. From George Clooney to Angelica Huston to Lenny Kravitz to Sofia Coppola, we’re told repeatedly why they find the Carlyle so inviting. They hint at scandals and extravagant parties, but no one ever divulges anything truly interesting.

There’s a lack of cohesion to the story Miele is trying to tell, so it’s not entirely clear what he hopes to accomplish. Part of the documentary focuses on the upcoming arrival of William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. From the initial call booking the room to the couple’s arrival, it could have been a lynchpin for the movie, but their story is abandoned half-way through the film. Instead, it’s simply another entry into the Carlyle’s roster of celebrity guests.

Miele’s film is, in some ways, representative of the worst of our celebrity-obsessed culture. It equates wealth with class, fame with sophistication, and the past as a time when things were “better.” It’s the same kind of culture that led to the death of the hotel’s frequent visitor, Princess Diana.

While The Carlyle may have an interesting story to tell, this documentary doesn’t do it.

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KITT, Meet Stem

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Upgrade

by Hope Madden

It’s a setup you’ll recognize. A man, doing man’s work, brightens when his wife arrives. Oh, they are really in love. Let’s just do this one thing before the romance, OK honey?

Minutes from now, she will be dead, he will be damaged, and eventually his suicidal melancholy will fuel revenge.

From Death Wish to John Wick to Death Wish (again), it’s a premise that never goes out of style and never, ever surprises.

Credit writer/director Leigh Whannell and star Logan Marshall-Green (The Invitation) for keeping you entertained for 90 minutes.

Marshall-Green plays Grey. While all the rest of the world relies on technology to drive them around, buy their eggs and dim their lights, Grey’s in the garage listening to blues on vinyl and rebuilding a Trans-Am.

After the aforementioned tragedy, Grey reluctantly turns to a Cyber Victor Frankenstein type (Harrison Gilbertson, a little over-the-top), who implants a chip to help repair the physical damage.

What happens from there is like Knight Rider meets David Cronenberg.

Right?!

Whannell freshens up the technophobe dystopian narrative with a few fresh ideas, a silly streak and serious violence.

This is the guy who wrote Saw, after all. Those who are surprised by the inspired bloodshed probably haven’t seen his canon.

Marshall-Green shines when he’s not morose and lovelorn, but rather tentatively administering “justice.” His physical performance and the action sequences are enough to keep you interested; the strangely comical tone rewards you for your time.

Aside from Betty Gabriel (always a joy to see her), the performances around Marshall-Green are serviceable: the devoted mom, the icy mercenaries, the boundlessly loving wife. Luckily, this is Marshall-Green’s show. Though he struggles (as does Whannell) with the emotional bits, he’s more than at home with the goofy and the violent.

Long live the flesh!

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Good Day Sunshine

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Let the Sunshine In

by Hope Madden

Claire Denis + Juliet Binoche = yes, please.

For her latest, Let the Sunshine In, the unerringly insightful French filmmaker takes on middle aged dating, following behind an exasperated Isabelle (Binoche) as she rotates through a series of relationships in Paris.

Isabelle is an artist, though her work—and her 10-year-old daughter, for that matter—are trivialities here. The point is the journey toward that last, real companion for the rest of the journey.

Could it be the boorish, married banker (Xavier Beauvois, flawlessly intolerable)? The boozy but oh-so-dreamy stage actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle)? Sensitive artist (Denis regular Alex Descas)? Brooding guy with the smooth dance moves (Paul Blain)? Ex-husband (Laurent Grevill)?

Whew! Who needs a rest?

Don’t look for any additional plot here. Denis’s focus, through a circuitous story of relationships crumbling, rekindling and sparking for the first time, simply illuminates the passionate daily trivialities of mid-life dating. She strips away nearly everything besides the ups and downs of Isabelle’s romantic life, sometimes skipping weeks at a time to pinpoint not the relationship itself, but each beginning and end.

And, of course, that intoxicating moment of promise —of love? Sex? Rejection? Few filmmakers capture that one moment, breathless and nervous, as authentically as Denis does.

It’s dizzying. No wonder Isabelle’s always so tired.

Binoche’s generous performance as the self-sabotaging Isabelle embraces the insecurities, optimism and neediness that color the character’s quest. Though never laugh-out-loud funny, the film is a comedy of sorts. There is something absurd about the assault of highs and lows, the desperate lurches toward love and the inevitably disappointing consequences.

And then a big cry and she’s off again.

Though Isabelle is a frustrating, often unlikeable character, the film never judges her. It’s too late to settle, which is a dangerous, selfish, vulnerable decision to make.

Good for her.

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Pretty Vacant

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How to Talk to Girls at Parties

by Hope Madden

Oh, the fish out of water tale. What if X found itself in Y: a mermaid in New York City, an American werewolf in London, an alien in Croyden? What hijinks could arise!

Elle Fanning is that alien, Zan, and Croyden is a suburb of London that was, in 1977, thrashing about to the strains of the burgeoning and decaying punk rock scene.

When Enn (Alex Sharp) and his fanzine-writing mates stumble into an alien house party, believing it to be a punk show after party, Zan abandons the strict duties of her visit to experience life on Earth.

Who better to bring Neil Gaiman’s short story to the big screen than Hedwig himself, John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus, Rabbit Hole)? Directing, as well as co-writing the adaptation with Philippa Goslett, Mitchell strives to complete Gaiman’s 18 pages with punk attitude, coming of age angst, romance, political asides and style.

He’s only marginally successful on any of those counts.

Punk rock seems a perfect vehicle for the central themes of conformity versus individuality. What the film needs is a little punk rock. Instead, it offers knowing lip service (and next to no music) in service of an all-too-earnest love story.

The brightest light glimmers from Nicole Kidman as grand master on the scene, Queen Boadicea. Patroness of the dingiest club, bondage artist and the dying spirit of an era not meant to age well, she relishes every ridiculous line and delivers perhaps the film’s only truly honest dialogue.

Fanning captivates, as is her way. All the joy, curiosity and misunderstanding she can muster create a character who becomes far more than simply the first hot girl to pay attention to Enn.

Sharp performs solidly as the wallflower everyman, although that is part of the problem. Scribblings, safety pins and zines aside, Enn is just a middle-of-the-road sweetheart. The film is not about the outsider at all, though it pretends to be.

It pretends a lot of things, sometimes very colorfully and often entertainingly, but without a raucous atonal tune to push it forward and with a fairly lukewarm crisis to overcome, it fails entirely at embodying the punk rock themes it proposes.

Oh my God, this movie is a poseur.

What would Hedwig think?