Tag Archives: movies

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Preparing the Bride

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Novitiate

by Rachel Willis

When Cathleen Harris (Margaret Qualley) is seven years old, her mother, out of a sense of duty and more than a little boredom, takes her daughter to church. So begins Cathleen’s love affair with God.

And it is a love affair, as Novitiate seeks to show its audience as it follows Cathleen from that first encounter to her time as a novitiate seeking to become a bride of Christ.

As a postulant (the first step in becoming a nun), Cathleen meets the Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo), a woman who joined the convent 40 years earlier and has not left the convent in those 40 years. With the introduction of the Reverend Mother, the film branches into two narratives. We see the convent through both Cathleen and the Reverend Mother on the eve of monumental changes to the Catholic Church.

If writer/director Margaret Betts had kept her story limited to these two perspectives, we would be treated to a tighter film. Cathleen is a mostly silent observer, her few words devoted to her devotion to God, but we see a great deal through her. When the film branches off to follow other postulants in the convent, as well as a sister questioning her faith, we lose the intimacy established in the beginning with Cathleen.

Betts is aware that many in the audience will not understand what it takes to become a nun, nor will they be familiar with the Church in the early 1960’s, so there are a few moments of exposition. However, they never feel heavy-handed or forced. It feels as if we’re entering as a postulant, then a novitiate, with Cathleen.

As our eyes into this world, Qualley is phenomenal as Cathleen. She brings an intensity to the role that is needed to understand the level of commitment to Christ it takes to become a nun.

Leo as the Reverend Mother brings a different level of intensity, one that not only explains her devotion to Christ, but her faith in the perfection of the Church as Vatican II seeks to alter the world to which she’s given her entire life.

There are moments when the film sinks into melodrama, and some scenes feel unnecessary to the story, but it’s a captivating glimpse into a world few of us witness.

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I See Dead People

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Coco

by Hope Madden

Pixar is probably still the best bet in animation, though they followed up their 2015 high point Inside Out with the somewhat mediocre The Good Dinosaur and Finding Dory, and finally the underwhelming third installment in their least impressive series, Cars 3.

Can Coco, a story of finding your place between family and dreams, between this world and the next, set things right?

The film follows Miguel (well voiced by young Anthony Gonzalez), a musician, like his great-great-grandfather. The one no one is allowed to mention. The one whose face has been torn from the family photo. The one the whole family is supposed to forget.

Instead of being a musician, Miguel is supposed to make shoes, like the great-great-grandmother who taught herself to make shoes when her husband left her to pursue his dreams of being a musician.

But Miguel prefers music—who wouldn’t?—and “borrows” the guitar of the great, long-dead hometown hero Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt) so he can play in the talent show during the Dia de los Muertos celebration.

One thing leads to another and Miguel finds himself in the Land of the Dead.

There are a number of things Coco does quite right. Though its themes are reminiscent of other Pixar films—Ratatouille, in particular—the cultural execution is a welcome change in a long and Euro-centric list of movies.

The film is also characteristically gorgeous, many frames spilling over with vivid color and imagery.

Coco also tells a satisfying story that packs an emotional wallop. Like the animation giant’s 2009 masterpiece Up, Coco invests in elderly characters and celebrates death as a tragic but inevitable consequence of life.

The structure by now has become common, with too many notions borrowed from other Pixar films. Worse, the laughs are rarely hearty and the genuine emotion is saved for the climax leaving too much time spent with little serious audience connection.

That’s the tough thing about being Pixar, though, isn’t it? We’ve become so accustomed to treasures that we disregard a lovely, heartfelt piece of family entertainment. Coco is no Toy Story, but it’s a lovely film.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of November 20

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Damn, a lot of movies come out this week. I guess if you have to drown out the yammering of family or just sit still for a long while and digest, you have your pick of movies to help you accomplish your laudable goals. Let us help you pick!

Click the title for the full review.

Good Time

Crown Heights

Lemon

Hex

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The Screening Room

The Screening Room: Justice, Kindness and Forgiveness

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Join us in The Screening Room to talk through this week’s new releases in theaters and home entertainment. We break down Justice League, Wonder, Lady Bird, The Square, Poor Agnes and Frank Serpico, plus the week’s BluRay, DVD and streaming releases.

Listen in HERE.

New In Theaters

Agnes, Sweet Agnes

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Poor Agnes

by Hope Madden

Small town sociopath, isolated farmhouse on land littered with rusted out car carcasses, a basement freezer full of human heads—Poor Agnes has all the trappings of your garden variety serial killer flick.

All but one: Lora Burke.

Burke plays Agnes, a woman who knows what she likes.

The film plays out like the origin story of some unstoppable slasher, and that works pretty well. Director Navin Rameswaran complicates his narrative and Agnes’s life with a side trip into Stockholm syndrome territory.

Agnes spends her days either chopping wood or injecting men with a concoction featuring “rat poison, mostly.” But she takes a liking to would-be victim Mike (Robert Notman), a low-rent private investigator whom no one will miss.

Rather than dispatching him quickly, Agnes indulges her inclination to play God and see how well she can re-mold Mike in her own image. Things seem to go smoothly until their twosome becomes a threesome.

While Burke’s unapologetically convincing, Notman’s performance is less so. Maybe his metamorphosis is too truncated by James Gordon Ross’s script, or maybe Notman can’t manage to sell the transformation. Whichever, too often his behavior feels utterly false. What we needed out of Notman was a version of Patty Hearst, but his face is a blank slate, his actions inauthentic.

That’s a real problem for this film because a tangy villain can only carry a story so far. Burke’s turn commands attention. She’s unafraid to be profoundly unlikeable, but she’s never over-the-top. It’s an alarmingly natural, more alarmingly believable portrait of a psychopath.

It’s probably reason enough to see the film.

New In Theaters

Choose Kind

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Wonder

by Hope Madden

On its surface, Wonder is about feeling like an outsider.

Auggie Pullman (Jacob Tremblay, proving that his remarkable turn in Room was no fluke) is about to start middle school. There’s anxiety enough in that, but this will be Auggie’s first “real school,” having spent his formative education being homeschooled by his more than capable mother (Julia Roberts).

But there’s more. Auggie suffers from a congenital malady which, after dozens of surgeries, leaves him with an unusually misshapen and scarred face. This is why he prefers to wear a space helmet whenever he’s in public.

To its enormous credit, Wonder makes Auggie’s plight universal. Doesn’t everyone entering middle school desperately fear some kind of ostracism? Doesn’t every parent fear the same for their tender youngster?

How much worse will it be for Auggie? Few parents will not recognize the sincerity in his mom’s plea as she sends her son off to his first day of real school: “Please, God, let them be nice to him.”

Roberts, whose work in recent years has radically outshone everything from the first couple decades of her career, offers a strong and believable center of gravity for both the Pullman family and the film.

Director Stephen Chbosky also co-wrote this adaptation of R.J. Palacio’s popular juvenile fiction book. Chbosky waded into similarly angst-ridden waters when he directed the screen version of his own novel Perks of Being a Wallflower, but with Wonder he manages to find an emotional truthfulness missing from his previous film.

Wonder is surprisingly—almost amazingly—understated, given the content. The film avoids many a tear-jerking cliché and sidesteps sentimentality more often than you might expect.

It’s also dishonest— well-meaning, but wildly dishonest. Conflicts are easily resolved, lessons quietly learned, comeuppance generally had and loose ends carefully tied.

Wonder is about as wholesome a movie as you will see, lacking even an ounce of cynicism, which certainly makes Auggie’s ordeal easier to bear. But it’s still a cinematic cop out.

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Birdhouse in Your Soul

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Lady Bird

by Hope Madden

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, may be the most delightfully candid and refreshingly forgiving coming-of-age film I’ve seen.

The great Saoirse Ronan—because honestly, is there now or has there ever been a more effortlessly talented 23-year-old?—plays Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson. Uniformed senior at Sacramento’s Immaculate Heart, Lady Bird is a work in progress.

Ronan is surrounded by talent. Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) shines as a sweetly gawky budding thespian while, as Lady Bird’s devoted bestie Julie, Beanie Feldstein (Neighbors 2) is heart-achingly wonderful.

Tracy Letts, playwright turned go-to character actor, proves again his natural ability in his newer profession as LB’s softie father. But it’s Laurie Metcalf who matches Ronan step for step.

As Lady Bird’s tough, even scary, mother, Metcalf is near-perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Rosanne star nab her first Oscar nomination for a turn that’s brave, funny, hard to watch and painfully authentic.

Lady Bird’s greatest desire is to escape Sacramento—“the Midwest of California”—in favor of someplace, anyplace, with culture. Preferably a liberal arts college in NYC. But her grades, her mom and her family’s financial situation present some (often hilarious) obstacles.

Though the film is hardly a straight-up comedy, its irreverent humor is uproarious. I laughed louder and more often during Lady Bird than any film this year.

The plot and the comedy are less the point here than you might expect. They are really just a device Gerwig uses to explore adolescence and its characteristic stage of reinvention. She throws in the surprisingly accurate image of a family’s financial struggle to boot, just to make sure we never mistake this for a John Hughes film, or, God forbid, Perks of Being a Wallflower.

No, this is not a cheese-clothed indictment of all the ills facing adolescents. It’s Rushmore with less camp and more authenticity, and that’s got more to do with Gerwig than her formidable cast.

Though Lady Bird’s landscape is littered with coming-of-age tropes, there is wisdom and sincerity in the delivery. Gerwig offers genuine insight rather than nostalgia or, worse yet, lessons to be learned. The result ranks among the best films of the year.

The Screening Room

The Screening Room: Family Holidays Can Be Murder

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Welcome to The Screening Rooom podcast! This week we break down the greatest and the least in theaters: Murder on the Orient Express, Daddy’s Home 2, The Florida Project, Wonderstruck and Mayhem. We also talk through what’s new in home entertainment. Listen in HERE.

New In Theaters

Take Your Inner Psycho to Work Day

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Mayhem

by Hope Madden

You know that nice lady at work who gets bronchitis every time she flies, then she coughs and hacks and spews DNA all over the office?

Let’s say you have issues with that kind of office contamination. And with office politics. And with your boss, her boss, and the way you’ve basically given up everything that makes you feel alive and happy for this stupid job you hate where germs are everywhere…

Wouldn’t it be cathartic to explode, right there, in the middle of everything, righteously and with no repercussions?

Mayhem, the new film from director Joe Lynch, is just that emotional release.

Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) plays Derek, mid-level white-collar prick in a law office. Just mid-level, though—there’s some conscience left in him. Still, he got where he is by finding the loophole that got a broad-daylight-surrounded-by-witnesses murderer off the hook.

The murderer had a virus—the Red Eye virus—which disrupts your ability to manage your emotions. You might weep uncontrollably, masturbate during a conference call, or stab your boss in the throat with a pen.

Here’s what’s important: we like Derek, his building is contaminated, his court case set the precedent allowing public murder and mayhem while under the 8-hour-ish influence of the virus.

Let’s just quarantine this building and see what happens.

The film is an exercise in workplace catharsis, and a pretty fun one. It’s far superior to other recent attempts at office-bound carnage The Belko Experiment and Bloodsucking Bastards, partly because Lynch has a crisp sense of pace and knack for comedy.

Matias Caruso’s script doesn’t hurt. Though it never mines deeply enough for the film to resonate beyond the “I hate my job and wouldn’t mind killing my boss” level, it’s clever fun from start to finish.

Yeun makes an excellent everyman and his enjoyable performance is matched by those of many of his evil colleagues. Dallas Roberts (also The Walking Dead) is exceptional as the head of HR, also known as The Reaper.

The film is little more than an id explosion in service of workplace fantasy. It keeps a light heart despite the carnage, doesn’t dig deep and doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. But it’s fun. Especially if you’ve ever wanted to kill your boss.

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Terror Train

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Murder on the Orient Express

by Hope Madden

Kenneth Branagh likes a big room.

The thespian and Shakespearean master often feels ill-suited to film, as if he cannot help but play to the back row. Whether Branagh is in front of or behind the camera, subtlety and subtext don’t appear to come easily.

How about Agatha Christie? Branagh gambles that a 20th-century crime novelist whose prose created the architecture for a genre of books, movies, stage and television will still thrill modern audience.

A stacked ensemble for Murder on the Orient Express makes the same wager.

Branagh plays Christie’s brusque genius, Belgian Inspector Hercule Poirot.

Branagh the director is so preoccupied with Branagh the actor that his talent-laden cast is offered little more to do than to quickly hash out one-dimension. The waste of talent is the real crime afoot.

Those underused? A wide array of A-listers, from immediate hot properties Daisy Ridley (The Last Jedi) and Marwan Kenzari (Aladdin) to cinematic icons (Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi) to true movie stars (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp)—and that’s not even half the cast.

Josh Gad appears in his second period-piece of the season (after last month’s Marshall), here playing a shady, drunken lawyer-turned-secretary who just might have killed a man.

Leslie Odom Jr. (Broadway’s Hamilton) plays a problem-solving doctor and former sharpshooter who just might have killed a man.

Penelope Cruz is a missionary nurse who won’t touch a drink, but she just might have…

You get the point. It’s an Agatha Christie story. At its best, campy, stagey fun. At its worst, stale.

The movie is a bit of both.

In keeping with Branagh’s love of spectacle, Murder on the Orient Express is a gorgeous, larger-than-life adventure. He shot on 65mm, and whether 20th Century Fox decides to release a 70mm print or not, the result is a glorious display, particularly in Act 1.

By the second act, we’re trapped in the train with a murderer. At that point, Branagh’s film starts to smell musty, and no quirky fun performances (Pfeiffer is particularly memorable) or delicately framed dining car treats can freshen things up.

When not doting on his star, Branagh’s camera showcases dazzling locations before luxuriating in the sumptuous appointments of the elegant train cars. It’s big. Very big. Grandiose, you might even say.

Which makes no sense at all for Christie’s close-quarters sleuthing of clues, faces, motives and sleight of hand.