Tag Archives: Screen Wolf

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Red Menace

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Captain America: Brave New World

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Look out! There’s a bloated menace wreaking havoc at the White House, throwing temper tantrums, creating enemies of allies, and ruining everything he touches.

But wait, could there be some nefarious, nerdy, unelected mastermind behind the villainy destroying the United States of America?

Art imitates life in Marvel’s latest big screen attempt, Captain America: Brave New World. Anthony Mackie picks up the shield as Cap. We’ve known Mackie could act since his 2009 breakout, The Hurt Locker, but can he carry a franchise film?

As a rule, franchise films are helped by the addition of Harrison Ford. He loses the mustache and picks up the mantle carried by Sam Elliott and William Hurt, playing Thaddeus Ross, newly elected President of the USA.

The President has done some pretty horrible things, though, and should really be in prison. Instead, he’s in the White House. Pair that with a mysterious villain trying to orchestrate a war, and the end of the world could be in sight.

But the movie has bigger problems, starting with its script. Writers Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman and Dalan Musson stuff the film with repetitive dialog and endless exposition. Not sure what just happened or what’s about to happen? No need to fret, somebody’s about to explain it again.

Director Julius Onah (Luce, The Cloverfield Paradox) strings together a few impressive action sequences, but the momentum always gets derailed by needless explanation and – especially in the third act – some bland CGI visuals. Even the cameos and end credits scene are less than inspiring.

From the beginning, the Captain America character felt like the moral compass of the MCU. The best films in the franchise have found ways to balance the super-heroics with timely questions about power and responsibility. Brave New World creates the opportunity but never allows Cap to follow through. Instead, complexities are neutered in favor of easily digestible answers and the next weakly earned plot point.

That’s what makes the film so disappointing. A deserving new hero and a solid cast are given a narrative treatment usually suited to streaming audiences who are looking at their phones or getting up to feed the dog.

Above all, this new world seems satisfied with playing it safe. And that’s not brave at all.

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Hookers and Blow

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Paddington in Peru

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

So what has Paddington bear been up to in the eight years since the classic Paddington 2?

Well, he’s got a new director (Dougal Wilson in his feature debut), a new Mrs. Brown (Emily Mortimer steps in for Sally Hawkins), and a brand new British passport (with an unusual photo)! And that legal ID comes in mighty handy when Paddington (perfectly voiced again by Ben Whishaw) gets a mysterious letter from Peru.

Aunt Lucy is missing!

So what’s there to do except pack up the Browns, Paddington, and Paddington’s brand new deluxe umbrella and head out to solve the mystery. After meeting with the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman, always a plus) and collecting clues at the Home for Retired Bears, the gang hires dashing Captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) to take them up river and straight into a jungle adventure.

Because while Paddington and family may be searching for Aunt Lucy, certain other parties are searching for El Dorado, the mythical lost city of gold!

The bar set by Paddington 2, an honest to God masterpiece, is very high. Dougal and team had their work cut out for them, and the Browns’ Peru visit is never quite as intricate, clever or transcendent as the last installment. But Colman’s comedic genius, lushly crafted scenery, meticulous CGI, and the cast and filmmakers’ commitment to the earnest charm characteristic of the franchise guarantee a delightful cinematic experience for every member of the family.

Dougal keeps the pace and perils lively, while the new screenwriting team (Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont) delivers sweet family fun that weaves in some warm furry feelies before the credits roll and a surprise guest appears.

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Mommy’s Little Angel

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Armand

by George Wolf

If you’re the parent of young children, your first reaction to troubling accusations against them is likely to be denial.

There must be some mistake, right? My child would never do such a thing.

It’s a catalyst that almost demands taking sides, and one that writer/director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel explores to unique effect in Armand.

The mesmerizing Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World, Handling the Undead, A Different Man) is Elisabeth, a Norwegian actress who is summoned to her son’s school for an urgent conference. Six year-old Armand has been accused of bullying his friend Jon in the boys restroom. The incident apparently involved acts of “sexual deviation.”

Jon’s parents, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit) are waiting at the school with two administrators and the boys’ teacher. And what begins as a calm attempt at fact-finding slowly dissolves into a fascinating unraveling of mystery, fantasy, and outright curiosity.

Ullmann Tøndel and cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth keep us inside the sterile school building for nearly all of the film’s two hours, puncturing the strained decorum with an array of devices. There are persistent nosebleeds, the sound of heels echoing on hard floors, moments of psychological performance art, and one alarming fit of laughter that purposely strains your patience.

It all helps to distinguish the film from similarly themed dramas such as The Teacher’s Lounge or even Mass, but also threatens to keeps us detached through self indulgence. The can’t-look-away excellence from Reisve never lets it happen, and Armand – which won the Caméra d’Or, for Best First Feature last year at Cannes – rewards audience commitment with a satisfying, if not exactly revelatory, resolution in Act Three.

The characters may be talking about children, but the film is talking about adults. Armand presents a challenging, but ultimately haunting take on the lingering dangers of convincing ourselves that everything is fine.

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Family’s Feud

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Bring Them Down

by George Wolf

Just weeks ago, Christopher Abbott was wrestling with wolves. Now it’s sheep, and the bloodlines still get bloody.

In Bring Them Down, Abbott is Michael O’Shea, a sheepherder who lives with his ailing father Ray (Colm Meaney) in the Irish countryside. Their farm shares a grazing hill with the Keelys – Gary (Paul Ready), Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) and their son Jack (Barry Keoghan), and Irish eyes are seldom smiling.

Michael and Caroline share a past, as well as a painful tragedy that the villagers still whisper about. So relations are already chilly. But when Michael catches the Keely boys trying to sell two O’Shea rams as their own, things escalate quickly.

This is grim stuff, as desolate as the Irish landscape. And much like the bare-fisted feuds that the Irish travelers in 2011’s Knuckle cannot exist without, the Keely and O’Shea men seem held by an enabling bond of generational trauma shattered only occasionally by the more pragmatic Caroline.

In a feature debut that fluctuates between the English and Irish languages, writer/director Chris Andrews crafts a taut family drama fueled by pain, violence and a tight circle of engrossing performances. Abbott’s intensity shows Michael has learned to navigate his guilt and anguish with quiet resolve, while Keoghan again proves adept at fleshing out the vulnerable shades of a dangerous character.

These are deeply committed and affecting turns, consistently elevating a story that’s left searching for that final thread to make its truly memorable. And in the third act, Andrews does introduce a sudden time shift, rewinding to reveal new angles of previous events. The attempt at an added layer of narrative depth is warranted, but this one lands with a curious and negligible effect.

Still, with a solid sense of setting, cast and framing, Bring Them Down heralds Andrews as a filmmaker of great potential. Once his actors get a little more character to chew on, he may start building his own legacy.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: You’re Cordially Invited, Companion, September 5, Hard Truths & More

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You’re Cordially Invited, Companion, September 5, Hard Truths, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Freelance, Like Father Like Son

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Sowing Suspicion

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The Seed of the Sacred Fig

by George Wolf

Mohammad Rasoulof’s films have shown him to be an insightful storyteller. His backstory reveals a courageous activist who continues to endanger his own life and freedom in support of artistic expression.

His latest, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, weaves in important details and actual footage from protests that erupted in Iran after the government’s brutal killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. As the narrative evolves from hushed family drama to frantic thriller, writer/director Rasoulof again shows his skill at turning intimate details into an allegory for oppression from a religious patriarchy in his homeland and beyond.

Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just been promoted to an Inspector’s post in Tehran (on the court that actually sentenced Rasoulof just three years ago). It’s a big moment for the family – Inspector is just one step below a judge – and Iman’s wife Najmeh (Sohelia Golestani) is hoping they’ll soon be awarded an apartment big enough for their teen-age daughters to each have their own bedroom.

Instead, Iman is awarded a gun.

Inspectors are involved in very serious cases. So serious that Iman must watch his back, Najmeh must not ask questions, and daughters Sana (Setareh Maleki) and Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) must choose their friends very carefully and stay off of social media.

Naturally, the girls have trouble adjusting and plead with their father to help when their friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) gets caught up in student protests and is arrested. This is a delicate issue, indeed, but it is when Iman’s gun turns up missing from the home that fear and suspicion completely overtake the household.

The loss of his gun could ultimately send Iman to prison, and the father turns to desperate measures against his own wife and children to root out the culprit.

Often filming in secret, Rasoulof assembles the escalation of events so carefully, and the performances are so achingly real, that nearly every frame of the film’s two hour and forty-five minutes seems necessary. The young daughters ask the defiant questions their parents abandoned long ago, supported with subtlety by an Iranian filmmaker daring to show women without head coverings (even in their homes).

Rasoulof has now fled Iran, while Zareh and Golestani have both been banned from travel. The Seed of the Sacred Fig stands as a testament to their courage, and as a sobering act of revolution.

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RSV-P.O.’d

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You’re Cordially Invited

by George Wolf

Can you believe there are some people who don’t think Will Ferrell is funny? That’s crazy to me. And what about the ones who claim they aren’t instantly charmed by Reese Witherspoon?

Okay I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Reese Witherspoon. But the point is, putting Will and Reese together isn’t a bad strategy for getting your Prime Video rom-com a little script insurance.

Writer/director Nicholas Stoller buys in for You’re Cordially Invited, and surrounds his two leads with an equally likable ensemble that delivers some lively smiles even when the antics go a bit overboard.

Will is Jim, a widower whose sweet pumpkin Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan – a delight as usual) just got engaged to Oliver (Stony Blydon)! Reese is Margot, who volunteers to plan her sister Neve’s (Meredith Hagner) wedding to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro). Through a ridiculous mixup that somehow feels like it could happen I suppose, Jim and Margot both end up reserving the very same private wedding venue on the very same weekend.

They reluctantly agree to make the best of it, but it isn’t long before the two wedding planners go “chaos monkey,” and start planning some mischief to each make sure it’s their celebration that gets the upper hand in marriage.

Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek) pits reality TV exec Margot and her bless-your-heart southern family (Leanne Morgan, Rory Scovel, matriarch Celia Weston) against the probably a hairdresser Jim and his daughter’s rowdy bridesmaids (Keyla Monterosso Mejia, Ramona Young, Lauren Holt). Expect drunken toasts, hurt feelings, black eyes, alligator wrestling and some enthusiastic, “Islands in the Stream” karaoke-ing.

For me, the only true LOL moment comes with the late reveal of what Jim really does for living (and Ferrell’s priceless delivery of that information). Still, there are amusements along the way, and some well- meaning lessons about judging people too quickly and feeling lonely around your own family members.

Of course you know where it’s ultimately headed. But with Will & Reese at the top of this engaging guest list, You’re Cordially Invited throws a home steaming party that’s slightly more fun than forgettable.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Skeletons in the Closet, 2025

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Maybe our favorite podcast of the year, the annual celebration of all the terrible horror movies that the new crop of Oscar nominees might just want you to forget they ever made. But will we? Never!

Happy to see so much horror appreciated this year: The Substance, Nosferatu, Alien: Romulus. But that’s for another podcast. Today, let’s pry open some closets and see what’s festering in there.

5. Sebastian Stan: The Apparition (2012)

Yawntastic! Ben (Stan) participates in a college experiment with Patrick (Tom Felton), who believes that if you believe hard enough in a spirit even if you know it doesn’t exist, it suddenly will exist.

And if that’s not dumb enough, it will also reappear suddenly many years later. And also hunt you down even if you’re far away, haven’t believed in it again, or I don’t know? And it turns into mold? Because it’s affected by energy? Or something? And it doesn’t like camping? Or it does?

Here’s what I know for sure. It’s boring as hell.

4. Guy Pearce: The Seventh Day (2021)

You know what every Guy Pearce fan should see? You should see Ravenous. It’s so good! Scary, tense, weird in the best way. You know what you probably shouldn’t see? The Seventh Day.

First of all, Justin P. Lange’s follow up to his underseen gem The Dark with an exorcism movie. Yawn. Then he goes on to waste real talent—Keith David and Stephen Lang. Pearce plays a legendary, no-frills, even controversial and brackish exorcist who’s taken on a trainee. But all is not what it seems and none of it’s very interesting. There’s a kind of intriguing premise hidden underneath all the boring whatnot, but it does seem like Pearce is trying to elevate the material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKW1TYC8_y0

3. Adrien Brody: Giallo (2009)

Dario Argento made some incredible films. Giallo is not one of them. It fits squarely into the uninspired, visually bland, poorly plotted output we saw from him post-Opera.

Adrien Brody, in duel roles, didn’t seem to care for the film, either. He used the pseudonym Byron Deidra, but you’ll know it’s him. Both times. There was a time when Argento’s films were so stylish, so visually arresting and gloriously weird that no one cared how silly the plot was. But rob a film of that panache and the borrowed, bland, dumb plotting is hard to miss.

Brody’s no stranger to horror, and while none of these are masterpieces, all but Giallo is decent: Wrecked, Predators, Splice, The Jacket, The Summer of Sam. We’re obligated to mention The Village, too, although we’re not fans.

2. Isabella Rossellini: Infected (2008)

What on earth was the tortured ingenue in the masterpiece Blue Velvet doing in Adam Weissman’s 2008 made-for-TV contagion/alien invasion flick? She’s great, actually, and her big-reveal scene is no doubt the reason she took the role. It’s inadvertently hilarious.

Judd Nelson co-stars. He may have been actively in a coma. But it’s worth it just to see Rossellini’s big scene. It’s on YouTube and dailymotion—wouldn’t want you to pay for it!

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2612003353/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

1. Demi Moore: Parasite (1982)

Friend of the show Charles Band directed this treasure of low rent cinema. Demi Moore stars ad spunky, lemon loving Pat in a post apocalyptic desert town. “Sickies” run wild, often topless. Work camp escapees are even worse. Still, somehow Pat trusts the stranger (Robert Glaudini), a doctor who used to create parasites for the government and is now infected with one. She’s just helpful like that.

Moore does not embarrass herself, and that’s tough given the terrible writing and stiff scene partner. Best part is the creature, which we believe inspired the look of the beast in Killer Condom. High praise!