All posts by Brent Leuthold

Column, Midwest Film Journal

Kurt Response: The Thing

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

Released the same day as fellow sci-fi classic Blade Runner on June 25, 1982, The Thing may be the coldest movie to ever hit the summer box office. Not only is it set in Antarctica during the winter but the opening shots after the title card depict parka-clad Norwegians chasing an Alaskan Malamute across snowy vistas. But chillier interactions are taking place inside a US research station, where pilot R.J. MacReady (played by Kurt Russell) dips his hand in a bucket to grab ice for his glass of J&B. He’s about to beat the Chess Wizard computer with a move he’s so sure will ice the game, he even taunts the program, smirking, “Poor baby, you’re startin’ to lose it, aren’t ya?” When it responds with a checkmate move, he wastes no time pouring his chilled scotch over the motherboard and calling the Chess Wizard a “cheating bitch”. Ice cold.

Based on both the novella Who Goes There? and its adapted 1951 film The Thing From Another World, The Thing finds MacReady and his team up against something far scarier than a chess-competing computer. The Norwegian scientists trying to shoot the escaped dog end up crashing their helicopter and as a result, Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) accompanies MacReady to their base to figure out what went wrong. Clark (Richard Masur), the American crew member in charge of their sled dogs, kennels the rogue Malamute and the crew is horrified when they find that the canine-appearing creature is not man’s best friend. An inspection of its flamethrower-charred remains leads biologist Blair (Wilford Brimley) to determine it’s an alien lifeform that can perfectly imitate other organisms. Paranoia grows as the team surmises that the extraterrestrial could have already assimilated into their group undetected.

When the villain of your story is a space monster that can replicate the appearance of any of the men trapped in an isolated outpost, director and horror maestro John Carpenter understands there needs to be one character on whom we can always rely. Kurt Russell wasn’t Carpenter’s first choice for the lead; in fact, several actors, including Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges, were considered before Carpenter finally settled on Russell the day before filming. The pair had worked together twice before The Thing and Russell turned out to be the perfect choice for R.J. MacReady. A war vet who flew choppers in Vietnam, he becomes the team’s de facto leader who, despite getting upset losing to a computer in the opening, gradually embodies the “cooler heads prevail” ethos. To Russell’s chagrin, Carpenter insisted that MacReady wear a sombrero but it was Russell’s idea for MacReady to sport what’s become a legendary cinematic beard.

Look, there’s just no other way to say this: Kurt Russell’s hair in The Thing is nothing short of miraculous. Does it actually make sense that a helicopter pilot in an arctic research facility would be this well-groomed? No, not really. As someone who can’t grow a beard, am I jealous that Russell can grow one this luminous? Yes, yes I am. According to the DVD commentary track, it took the star almost a year to grow it out along with his slightly longer than usual hair. Whether it’s intentional or not, there are a couple wardrobe decisions (in addition to the aforementioned sombrero) that attempt to make MacReady not look like the coolest guy possible. While incinerating one of the “Thing” clones outside the base, MacReady wears clear lab goggles stretched over a hoodie working mightily to stifle his coiffed mane. But it doesn’t last long, as the frost gradually makes its way to the luscious hair on his face and atop his head.

Besides the impeccable hairstyling, one of the primary joys in watching Russell’s performance in The Thing is watching MacReady ascend from just one of the guys to the man in charge. He makes some risky moves along the way to prove his humanity but after he successfully talks station command Garry (Donald Moffat) and radio operator Windows (Thomas Waites) down from a standoff, MacReady becomes the most reliable of the bunch. Shortly after a speech where he establishes how he means to handle things moving forward, he records a message into a tape machine, in case nobody makes it out alive. “Nobody trusts anybody now,” he concedes, “And we’re all very tired.” In that crucial scene, one of the few where a character is alone with their thoughts, Russell has a resignation in his eyes that makes his heroics in the third act all the more impressive.

In addition to his work on-screen, Russell had a major contribution behind the scenes too, working with to Carpenter shore up an ending they both felt would work best serve the story. When the two reportedly weren’t satisfied with the original conclusion, which definitively proved that MacReady is still human after all, Russell reportedly wrote the last scene that appears in the film. It’s understandable why producers would want a horror movie marked by distrust and insecurity to leave audiences with a measure of relief as opposed to more uncertainty. But at the same time, closing on a conversation that percolates with fear of the unknown is the perfect send-off. Like Blade Runner, which was originally released with a studio-mandated “happy ending” that was omitted from future cuts, The Thing works better with a more ambiguous final note.

Reel Views, Review

The Bride!

Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal taps her The Lost Daughter star Jessie Buckley for The Bride!, the second classic literary adaptation from Warner Bros this season designed to turn heads. Though “Wuthering Heights” shares this monstrous reimagining’s penchant for titular punctuation, Gyllenhaal’s sophomore effort in the director’s chair is even more “extra” in its execution. As Frankenstein author Mary Shelley (played by Jessie Buckley) tells us at the outset, this story is also one of tortured romance but is dedicated to a tortuous framing conceit that sinks the whole movie. In monochromatic interludes, Shelley breaks the fourth wall and cackles as she teases unfinished business from her landmark novel. In this context, this tale isn’t a “reinvigoration” — to borrow a descriptor from the film — of 1935’s Bride Of Frankenstein but the feminist follow-up Shelley never got to write.

From beyond the grave, Shelley possesses Ida (also played by Buckley), a young harlot living in 1930s Chicago who makes herself available to mob associates like Clyde (John Magaro) before she takes a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. At the same time, the reanimated creature “Frank” (Christian Bale) beseeches mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) for a female companion to ease the loneliness of his existence. They dig up Ida’s corpse and reanimate her in Euphronious’ laboratory but the memory of her past life is wiped out in the process, leaving Frank to fill in the gaps with fanciful untruths. His temper turns deadly towards a pair of agitators who attempt to assault his Bride and the couple heads east as fugitives, with Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz) hot on their trail.

For a film that posits itself as a manifesto of female liberation, The Bride! can’t seem to decide what it’s trying to say with its titular protagonist. Buckley’s frenetic performance doesn’t help either, as her character periodically gets possessed by Shelley and spits out writerly rants in Queen’s English before reverting back to a Great Lakes dialect. I’ve no doubt she’s doing what Maggie Gyllenhaal had in mind but her volatile manner of acting doesn’t allow us a way into the interior life of this heroine. The story contrives scenarios wherein Ida can be heralded as an iconoclast but if one zooms out on the narrative, it’d be difficult to say she actually has much agency here. Frank’s actions and motivations guide the vast majority of their journey and his Bride is, literally and figuratively, along for the ride as they hit the road.

If this sounds very Bonnie And Clyde, it’s safe to assume The Bride! luxuriates in the comparison, as it gleefully forefronts its cinematic references whether in-period or anachronistic. Maggie Gyllenhaal recruits her brother Jake to play a song-and-dance star à la Fred Astaire that Frank idolizes on the silver screen. Frankly, I’ll take any opportunity to see the younger Gyllenhaal sibling croon and tap dance in fictitious black-and-white talkies with names like Heartbreak Holiday and The Dubious Detective. Astaire’s frequent cohort Ginger Rogers is name-checked and even used as an alias for a time, as Ida communes with Shelley about finding her true identity. There’s an odd Young Frankenstein musical tie-in and an even odder closing credit choice in song that doesn’t even sound like a good idea on paper but is much sillier in execution.

Buckley’s the favorite to win Best Actress this weekend and it’s hard not to see the influence that projects by two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone had on this movie. Poor Things was its own uninhibited riff on Bride Of Frankenstein but that film took the effort to put its regenerated heroine through a meaningful arc and made her tale of discovery unforgettable. The Bride! also revels in the female-fronted punk-lite provocation of Cruella, which itself borrowed heavily from the mythology recontextualization of Todd Phillips’s Joker. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Gyllenhaal called on that film’s cinematographer Lawrence Sher and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to closely emulate that box office smash’s towering presentation. “Never was there a tale so fine as The Bride and her Frankenstein,” Shelley bellows at one point but on the basis of The Bride!, I can’t say I’m convinced.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Reminders Of Him, a romantic drama starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, following a woman recently released from prison who attempts to reconnect with her young daughter and finds love while trying to escape her troubled past.
Also playing in theaters is Undertone, a supernatural horror movie starring Nina Kiri and Adam DiMarco, telling the story of a host of a popular paranormal podcast who becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.
Streaming on Shudder is Bodycam, a horror film starring Jaime Callica and Sean Rogerson, in which two police officers attempt to cover up an accidental shooting after investigating a domestic dispute but find the cameras aren’t the only things watching them.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Hoppers

Most pop culture geeks are familiar with the 20 Year Rule, a cyclical principle in which popular trends can enjoy rejuvenated relevance roughly 20 years after their initial emergence. It’s why mid-aughts nostalgia is everywhere now, from emo stalwarts helming major music festivals to sitcoms like Scrubs and Malcolm In The Middle getting rebooted. The latest Pixar film Hoppers is mired in a mid-2000s animal-crazy animated era, when box office beasts like Madagascar, Ice Age: The Meltdown and Open Season ran rampant. It’s a throwback to when all you needed was a bevy of fuzzy creatures to make families at the cineplex happy. But the standard is higher now, chiefly because of Pixar output like Ratatouille, WALL·E and Up from the later 2000s that raised the bar for all American animation.

The hero of Hoppers is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), a peppy sophomore at Beaverton University whose love of nature stems from time spent as a kid with her grandmother by a tranquil glade nearby. Ever the activist, she frequently petitions against Mayor Jerry Generazzo (voiced by Jon Hamm) and his efforts to expand the town at the expense of the local forests and their inhabitants. Jerry’s latest plan involves demolishing the very glade Mabel loved as a child to make way for Beaverton Beltway but when Mabel goes to revisit it, she discovers a particular beaver is acting strangely. It turns out that it’s actually a beaver-appearing robot that Mabel’s biology professor Dr. Sam (voiced by Kathy Najimy) has zapped her consciousness into so she can study the habitat. Against Dr. Sam’s wishes, Mabel “hops” into the robotic animal to help the glade flourish with wildlife once again before it’s too late.

Marketing for Hoppers has leaned heavily into an interaction Mabel has with Dr. Sam when she first finds out about the body-swapping tech; “Guys, this is like Avatar!” Mabel gawks, while Dr. Sam protests, “This is nothing like Avatar!” Since Disney now owns 20th Century Fox, the exchange counts not only as a cross-promotional effort but a meta way to get ahead of the film’s flimsy and derivative premise. The storyline is most reminiscent of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (which Avatar incidentally cribbed from as well), Happy Feet and other environmentally-conscious animated efforts. Messages about corporate interests poisoning the natural world remain depressingly relevant, but there have already been so many kid’s films with those themes that you have to broach the subject with more nuance than what’s on display here.

A member of Pixar’s senior creative team since 2022, Daniel Chong has his first shot here at directing a full feature for the studio and developed the story with fellow Pixar mainstay Jesse Andrews. He recruits a talented comedic ensemble of Saturday Night Live alum like Bobby Moynihan, Melissa Villaseñor and Ego Nwodim to voice cute animals that reside in the woods. Meryl Streep and Dave Franco fill out the dramatic side as an insect mother and son duo that seek to use the “hopping” technology for revenge against constantly interloping humans. Their sinister plot gives way to a third act that’s surprisingly menacing for a Pixar movie but even the darker turns don’t fully make up for a story whose stakes are largely superficial up to that point.

Between a montage set to “Working For The Weekend” where fuzzy creatures rebuild a dam and lines like “flock around and find out!” from a goose character, Hoppers feels tossed-off and regressive for a studio that knows better. Even if you’re going to populate your movie with myriad woodland dwellers, you can still write them with a sophistication that makes them memorable in addition to being adorable. With the exception of Mabel, the human characters are similarly underwritten and mainly just relied on as props to keep the action moving. The nature animation, particularly of the beaver’s Superlodge community, is predictably awe-inspiring from an animation house that is second to none when it comes to crafting intricate digital worlds. But in terms of storytelling, Hoppers feels like a hop backward in time to an era when simply compiling “wacky” animated critters was enough to win the day.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Bride!, a gothic crime movie starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, in which a companion is created for a reanimated creature and the pair spark up romance, police interest and radical social change.
Also playing in theaters is Dolly, a horror film starring Fabianne Therese and Seann William Scott, involving a young woman who fights for survival after being abducted by a deranged, monster-like figure who wants to raise her as their child.
Streaming on Netflix is War Machine, a sci-fi action movie starring Alan Ritchson and Dennis Quaid, which follows the final recruits of a grueling special ops boot camp who encounter a deadly force from beyond this world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

How To Make A Killing

After his terrific feature debut Emily The Criminal, writer-director John Patton Ford returns with another desperate-times-desperate-measures thriller in How To Make A Killing. A loose adaptation of the dark comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets, the film makes another strong case for rising star Glen Powell as a leading man on the heels of Twisters and The Running Man. His devilish charisma has been put to great use in effects-heavy sequels and remakes like those, but in a comparatively smaller budget indie like this, watching Powell work his way around a stacked ensemble feels like its own special effect. The movie marries the one-percenter bloodlust of last year’s Death Of A Unicorn with the satirical roll-up-your-sleeves gumption of recent release No Other Choice, and while it doesn’t reach the transcendent heights of the latter, it’s assuredly a better time at the movies than the former.

Powell stars as Becket Redfellow, a menswear associate making his way in New Jersey after his mother was cast out of their obscenely wealthy family as a teenager for having Becket out of wedlock. His childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) pops into the shop one day and as they catch up on old times, she asks him about the fantastical family fortune he routinely mentioned when they were kids that he would eventually inherit. It turns out that even though he’s estranged from the Redfellows, seven living family members are all that stand between him and billions of dollars. “Well, call me when you’ve killed them all,” Julia jokes as she leaves, but after Becket is ousted from his job to make room for the owner’s son, he hatches up a precarious plan to knock off each of the affluent obstacles one by one.

It’d be hard to tell a sympathetic story of a reluctant serial killer, even in a black comedy, if his victims were virtuous, so How To Make A Killing makes sure to play up the pomposity of the relatives on Becket’s hit list. His youngest cousin Taylor (Raff Law) is introduced almost doing Becket’s job for him, jumping out of a helicopter and miraculously not breaking his neck as he lands in a pool surrounded by partygoers. Elsewhere, cousins Noah (Zach Woods) and Steven (Topher Grace) squander their money and status with hipster photography and vainglorious preaching, respectively. But Becket’s plan hits a snag when his uncle Warren (Bill Camp) takes him under his wing and gets him a job in the banking business. His scheme gets put on hold further when he also takes a shine to Noah’s schoolteacher girlfriend Ruth (Jessica Henwick).

Where John Patton Ford’s previous effort was committed to solely being a lean-and-mean crime thriller, How To Make A Killing stretches itself thinner in terms of genre convictions. The emergence of a love triangle puts portions of the plot in romantic territory, while the dynamics of the crime storyline recall the film noir archetypes of the hard-luck everyman and femme fatale. Ford bites off a bit more than he can chew narratively as well, front-loading too many flashbacks and utilizing an ironic framing device that renders the ending preposterous. But Ford’s sharp writing finds the absurdity in Becket’s situation and even when he’s in peril, Powell makes the zingers zing. “There’s a rumor out there that money doesn’t buy happiness,” he smirks. “Money does buy happiness. We’re all adults here. Let’s move on.”

Handsome and brimming with confidence, Powell could just as easily be playing one of the WASPy schmucks that Becket targets but he plays up the character’s underdog qualities to the degree that we can root for him. Conversely, Topher Grace and a typically brilliant Zach Woods make their characters so hilariously despicable in their self-centeredness and vapidity that we simply can’t wait for them to get it. Jessica Henwick makes the most of an underwritten cypher for Becket’s morality and Margaret Qualley radiates sex appeal with a dash of danger as the unhappily married Julia. Even when the plot swerves in more directions than is advisable, this killer cast makes How To Make A Killing worth getting your hands into its risky business.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Scream 7, a slasher sequel starring Neve Campbell and Isabel May, in which a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life and her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.
Also playing in theaters is EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, a documentary and concert film of the titular King Of Rock And Roll featuring newly restored and never-before-seen footage from long-lost 1970s Las Vegas residency footage.
Streaming on Hulu is In The Blink Of An Eye, a sci-fi drama starring Kate McKinnon and Rashida Jones, weaving together three storylines, spanning thousands of years that intersect and reflect on hope, connection and the circle of life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

List

Notes on the 2026 Oscars

Best Picture

A strong set of 10 nominees overall, with F1 being the biggest surprise of the batch, zooming past superior bubble picks like It Was Just An Accident and No Other Choice. The Black horror smash Sinners leads the pack with an astonishing 16 nominations, the most for any film in Academy Award history. Warner Bros. is very likely to come away happy, as their Sinners and One Battle After Another are the frontrunners to take the top prize. Both are outstanding movies, exceedingly accomplished technically and bursting with impassioned ingenuity. One Battle After Another, my favorite release last year, would be my personal pick but it also seems the more likely of the two to win Best Picture at this point. But beyond just being a great movie, Sinners was a box office hit and achieved near-unanimous praise from critics and audiences alike, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes top honors.

My Prediction: One Battle After Another
My Vote: One Battle After Another
Overlooked: No Other Choice

Best Director

As is typically the case, the Best Director category is more of a sure thing, since it doesn’t adhere to the same ranked choice voting as Best Picture does. Paul Thomas Anderson has made several masterpieces in his career and has earned the respect of his peers over the past 30 years. More specific to One Battle After Another, he knocked it out of the park with a budget 4-5 times what he typically gets for his projects. He’s also been nominated for Best Director on 3 prior occasions, so winning for his 10th feature could be considered overdue but certainly better late than never. As someone who was underwhelmed by Hamnet, I would’ve loved to instead see a nod for Mona Fastvold here, even if it had been The Testament Of Ann Lee‘s only nomination.

My Prediction: Paul Thomas Anderson
My Vote: Paul Thomas Anderson
Overlooked: Mona Fastvold – The Testament Of Ann Lee

Best Actor

To the delight of some and torment of others, it’s Timmy time. At 30 years old, Timothée Chalamet has already accrued 3 acting Oscar nominations and he’s the favorite to win Best Actor for his persona-mirroring work as the titular Marty Supreme. The guy’s an egomaniac but like Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler in Safdie outings Good Time and Uncut Gems, respectively, Chalamet puts in career-best work as a reprobate with no shortage of self-confidence. I’d also be happy with Leonardo DiCaprio (he’s won before but I prefer this performance) or especially Michael B. Jordan winning too. I’m ashamed to admit a good portion of The Secret Agent went over my head but regardless, I would’ve liked to have seen Josh O’Connor over Wagner Moura in this group for his anchoring role in the latest Knives Out mystery.

My Prediction: Timothée Chalamet
My Vote: Michael B. Jordan
Overlooked: Josh O’Connor – Wake Up Dead Man

Best Actress

As much as Jessie Buckley has risen to prominence over the past 5 years or so, I’m actually surprised she’s only been nominated for an Academy Award one other time for 2021’s The Lost Daughter. Again, Hamnet wasn’t quite my cup of tea but it’s bolstered by Buckley’s tremendously committed work as Agnes Shakespeare and she’ll likely take home the statue as a result. If she doesn’t, I’d love to see Rose Byrne up there for my favorite performance of last year as a harried psychotherapist on the edge of a breakdown in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Kate Hudson was probably my favorite aspect of the curious biopic Song Sung Blue but her nomination here over Amanda Seyfried or Chase Infiniti is a head-scratcher. I’m not sure why the latter was so set on campaigning for Best Actress when Infiniti has about 30 minutes of screen time in One Battle.

My Prediction: Jessie Buckley
My Vote: Rose Byrne
Overlooked: Amanda Seyfried – The Testament Of Ann Lee

Best Supporting Actor

My Prediction: Stellan Skarsgård
My Vote: Sean Penn
Overlooked: Andrew Scott – Blue Moon

Best Supporting Actress

My Prediction: Teyana Taylor
My Vote: Teyana Taylor
Overlooked: Chase Infiniti – One Battle After Another

Mostly expected (but no less deserving) selections here, with Delroy Lindo being the most pleasant surprise; he should’ve been nominated (and probably won) 5 years ago for Da 5 Bloods. Stellan Skarsgård found a career-cultivating role as an aging director in Sentimental Value, and he seems to be the frontrunner for Supporting Actor, but I’d love to instead see Sean Penn take home his third Oscar for his glowering gonzo work as Col. Lockjaw. One Battle After Another should have a better shot in the Supporting Actress category, with Teyana Taylor’s fiery and unforgettable performance being the most likely to win there. Amy Madigan, whose first Oscar nomination was 40 years ago for Twice In A Lifetime, would be a fun upset pick for her portrayal as one of 2025’s most memorable villains.

Best Original Screenplay

My Prediction: Sinners
My Vote: It Was Just An Accident
Overlooked: Splitsville

Best Adapted Screenplay

My Prediction: One Battle After Another
My Vote: One Battle After Another
Overlooked: Superman

Best Animated Feature Film

My Prediction: KPop Demon Hunters
My Vote: KPop Demon Hunters
Overlooked: Scarlet

Best International Feature Film

My Prediction: Sentimental Value
My Vote: It Was Just An Accident
Overlooked: No Other Choice

Best Documentary – Feature

  • The Alabama Solution
  • Come See Me in the Good Light
  • Cutting Through Rocks
  • Mr Nobody Against Putin
  • The Perfect Neighbor

My Prediction: The Perfect Neighbor
My Vote: The Perfect Neighbor
Overlooked: Predators

Best Documentary – Short Subject

  • All The Empty Rooms
  • Armed Only With A Camera: The Life And Death Of Brent Renaud
  • Children No More: “Were And Are Gone”
  • The Devil Is Busy
  • Perfectly A Strangeness

My Prediction: Armed Only With A Camera: The Life And Death Of Brent Renaud
My Vote: —
Overlooked: —

Best Live Action Short Film

  • Butcher’s Stain
  • A Friend Of Dorothy
  • Jane Austen’s Period Drama
  • The Singers
  • Two People Exchanging Saliva

My Prediction: Two People Exchanging Saliva
My Vote: —
Overlooked: —

Best Animated Short Film

  • Butterfly
  • Forevergreen
  • The Girl Who Cried Pearls
  • Retirement Plan
  • The Three Sisters

My Prediction: Butterfly
My Vote: —
Overlooked: —

Best Original Score

My Prediction: Sinners
My Vote: Sinners
Overlooked: Marty Supreme

Best Original Song

  • “Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless
  • “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters
  • “I Lied to You” from Sinners
  • “Sweet Dreams Of Joy” from Viva Verdi!
  • “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams

My Prediction: “Golden”
My Vote: “Golden”
Overlooked: “My Sweet Beth” from The Naked Gun

Best Sound

My Prediction: F1
My Vote: Sinners
Overlooked:  Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning

Best Casting

My Prediction: Sinners
My Vote: Marty Supreme
Overlooked: The Phoenician Scheme

Best Cinematography

My Prediction: Sinners
My Vote: One Battle After Another
Overlooked: Weapons

Best Costume Design

My Prediction: Frankenstein
My Vote: Frankenstein
Overlooked: Hedda

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

My Prediction: Frankenstein
My Vote: Frankenstein
Overlooked: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Best Film Editing

My Prediction: One Battle After Another
My Vote: One Battle After Another
Overlooked: A House Of Dynamite

Best Production Design

My Prediction: Frankenstein
My Vote: Frankenstein
Overlooked: Eternity

Best Visual Effects

My Prediction: Avatar: Fire and Ash
My Vote: Sinners
Overlooked: Mickey 17

Enjoy the show!

Reel Views, Review

“Wuthering Heights”

English writer-director Emerald Fennell puts the “more” in Yorkshire Moors with “Wuthering Heights”, her torrid but tawdry take on the oft-adapted Emily Brontë novel. Based on Fennell’s two previous efforts, Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, one may go into this movie expecting something similarly sinful and transgressive as her other features. But the filmmaker’s penchant for empty provocation is largely eschewed for a period piece that looks every bit the classic Hollywood romance, with only flashes of racier on-screen explications of licentious longing. Even though Romeo And Juliet is discussed at length during one scene in Fennell’s film, her version of an ostensibly similar romantic tragedy isn’t a radical reinterpretation à la Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and, given how many times Brontë’s classic has already been seen on screen, is worse off for it.

In late 18th-century England, Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) and her father (played by Martin Clunes) take in a destitute young boy (played by Owen Cooper) without a name, whom Cathy dubs “Heathcliff”. Through the years, the two become close as Cathy teaches Heathcliff how to read and Heathcliff handles chores around the estate. As adults, Cathy (played by Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi) share an inseparable bond but looking to improve her situation, Cathy sets her sights on their wealthy new neighbor Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Soon after an arranged run-in, Cathy accepts Edgar’s proposal for marriage and a heartbroken Heathcliff flees after what he sees as a betrayal of their inextricable bond. A year later, he returns to find Cathy is with child and well cared for at Linton’s manor, but she’s still secretly yearning to make an impossible affair with Heathcliff work.

Though “Wuthering Heights” isn’t the most revelatory telling of this tale, make no mistake that this is a first-rate production, where every dollar of its $80 million budget is well-represented on-screen. The production design is consistently stunning, harkening back to Golden Age theatrical opulence when the costumes and sets worked in concert to become characters in the story. One piece of gothic set design that’s particularly striking is a fireplace surrounded by melted plaster handprints, a haunting homage to the theme of reaching out for something incendiary and ill-advised. Linus Sandgren, whose cinematography in Saltburn was one of that film’s highlights, makes an absolute meal out of lavish nature settings where every moor is perpetually fog-enveloped and every sunset is blood red.

There aren’t any performances in “Wuthering Heights” that stand out as subpar but with the exception of Alison Oliver in an eccentric supporting role, not much of the acting here feels especially adventurous either. Much has been made about how star and co-producer Margot Robbie has promoted the film by waxing poetic about her off-screen “codependent” connection with Jacob Elordi. While I don’t doubt there were some sparks, I’d mostly chalk all the talk up to a marketing stunt so auditoriums could fill up for Valentine’s Day weekend. Regardless, the pair sell the love like the pros they are and indulge the darker sides of lust and obsession as well. But in a movie rife with BDSM undertones, it’s most disappointing that Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual kink is treating everyone outside of their relationship horribly.

“Wuthering Heights” is hardly the first romantic drama to underscore an “us vs. the world” mentality but in Fennell’s cynical translation of this material, love means never having to say you’re sorry to bystanders you’ve treated with derision and contempt. There’s a mean streak in this movie’s Cathy and Heathcliff — primarily in how they manipulate others and dispose of them afterwards — that tracks with the callousness present in Fennell’s cinematic output thus far. A negative worldview comports better if you’re making a vigilante thriller or a dark comedy but when you’re tackling classical romance, it just feels like the wrong attitude to bring. Climbing these Heights wouldn’t feel as daunting if we had better footholds for character motivation beyond the doomed lovers imposing their will, no matter who they burn along the way.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
How To Make A Killing, starring Glen Powell and Margaret Qualley, is a black comedy thriller involving a young man disowned at birth by his ultra-wealthy family who will stop at nothing to reclaim his $28 billion inheritance.
I Can Only Imagine 2, starring John Michael Finley and Milo Ventimiglia, is a faith-based sequel following the lead singer of Christian band MercyMe as he struggles with his beliefs and inner demons while seeking a path through adversity.
Playing at Cinema Center is The Voice Of Hind Rajab, a docudrama nominated for the Best International Feature Film at next month’s Academy Awards about Red Crescent volunteers responding to an emergency call from a 6-year-old girl trapped in a car.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man walks into a busy LA diner and says he’s from the future. It’s not, per se, the setup for a joke but rather the starting point for Gore Verbinski’s daffy and deliriously delightful genre mashup Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Dressed in a clear poncho adorned with myriad jerry-rigged gizmos, the “future man” (played by Sam Rockwell) warns the patrons that the future is not as bright as they may think it is. Even a haphazard bomb threat is barely enough for the folks there to unglue their eyeballs from their smartphones but a select few choose to join the purported time traveller in his quest to save the future. We learn their motivations to stop an out-of-control artificial intelligence stem from unnerving tech run-ins that point to things heading down the wrong path.

There’s Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), dressed like a Disney princess in a corner booth, whose allergic reaction to any tech device puts a strain on her relationship with her boyfriend Tim (Tom Taylor) when he gets addicted to a VR world. Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) are married schoolteachers whose students lumber towards them like zombies when they’re separated by their phones, which are hypnotizing them with an ominous pyramid symbol. But the first to volunteer for the world-saving mission is Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother who, following the death of her ninth-grade son in a school shooting, resorts to having a not-quite-right clone of her son created to cope with the loss. Unaware of what the night has in store, the recruits follow the man from the doom-and-gloom future for an adventure that will hopefully correct the course for all of humanity.

After a nine-year hiatus following the 2017 head trip A Cure For Wellness, it’s great to have Gore Verbinski back in the director’s chair for something as go-for-broke and unvarnished as Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Best known for helming the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, Verbinski proves he doesn’t need a Kraken-sized budget to effectuate his “yes and” ethos of filmmaking. In the backstory vignettes he intersperses through the storyline, he introduces satirical sci-fi concepts that feel descendant from the British era of the tech-paranoid series Black Mirror. Though they’re telling stories that feel specific to each of the characters, they bolster the overall feeling that this world is extremely close to a tipping point into oblivion.

The cheekily apocalyptic tone is embedded in screenwriter Matthew Robinson’s outstanding script, which brilliantly synthesizes the anxieties that have crept up over the past few years around AI and the overwhelming pace of technovation. When the central characters sneak through neighborhood backyards for their covert mission, there isn’t much fear about being discovered because all the residents are so mesmerized by their touchscreens; “Nobody sees anything they don’t want to see,” Rockwell’s weary time-traveller tells them. As with any scribe who includes social commentary about tech-induced anti-intellectualism, Robinson runs the risk of coming across like a scold who’s been beaten to the punch by other movies and TV shows that have tapped into similar themes. But in this case, the biting humor fits right in.

Ever the wild card, Sam Rockwell is a perfect vessel for Verbinski’s zealous storytelling sensibilities and Robinson’s sharply comic screenplay, the latter of which gives him one-liners like “I didn’t mean to punch him that hard, I have apocalypse strength!” The extended opening sequence, in which Rockwell’s madman rambunctiously works his way around the diner, is a masterpiece of magnetic acting by Rockwell and superb blocking by Verbinski. Down the stretch, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die goes down narrative avenues that some will find too goofy to indulge and the movie, admittedly, has too many endpoints tacked on. But in a world where existing IPs and unnecessary sequels continue to rule the multiplex, it’s hard not to admire a film that flies in the face of convention with this much confidence.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
“Wuthering Heights”, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, is a romantic drama loosely inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel involving a passionate and tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.
Crime 101, starring Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, is a crime thriller in which the paths of a disillusioned insurance broker and an elusive thief eyeing his final score intertwine, while a relentless detective trails them in hopes of thwarting their heist.
GOAT, starring Caleb McLaughlin and Gabrielle Union, is an animated sports comedy in which a small goat with big dreams gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to play professional Roarball, a full-contact sport dominated by the fastest and fiercest animals in the world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Dracula

At this point, there have been so many cinematic attempts at adapting Bram Stoker’s immortal vampiric tale that filmmakers shouldn’t bother cracking that coffin open unless they have something new to say. Romanian rabblerouser Radu Jude certainly had an original and outrageous take on the mythos with last year’s Dracula and now French director Luc Besson’s vision of the archetypal vampire arrives in US theaters. Developed with the working title Dracula: A Love Tale, this version focuses on the romantic angle between the titular Transylvanian and who he believes to be the reincarnation of his long lost love. Despite the added amorous angle and a dash of theater and whimsy to the typical Dracula proceedings, this newest telling is basically the same undead Count in a slightly different cloak.

We begin in 15th century Wallachia, where Prince Vladimir (Caleb Landry Jones) is away in battle when his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) is ambushed and killed by Ottoman troops. As punishment for renouncing God, whom Vlad blames for Elisabeta’s death, he becomes the undead Count Dracula and is made to languish for centuries without his eternal bride. Flash forward to the late 1800s and real estate solicitor Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) travels from Paris to the Count’s creepy castle in Transylvania. After keeping Harker there longer than he’d prefer, Dracula finds that his fiancée Mina (also played by Zoë Bleu) is the spitting image of his beloved Elisabeta. He sets out on a quest to find Mina with designs to turn her into a fellow vampire, so the pair can live eternally, as Vlad and Elisabeta never could.

Though it’s not quite as erotically charged and poorly acted as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 iteration of Bram Stoker’s book, Besson’s Dracula nevertheless feels indebted to it stylistically and tonally. Melodramatic dialogue, as when Dracula relays to Harker that “life without love is the worst disease of all,” would not feel at all out of place in Coppola’s winner of 3 Academy Awards. Besson employs moody overlays and evocative montages that also recall the mise en scène of the Coppola effort, as when a dolorous Dracula hurls himself out of a castle window repeatedly, with death never coming. Sadly, Tom Waits must not have been available to reprise his role as the deranged Dracula familiar Renfield, a secondary character omitted from this new film altogether.

A considerable presence who’s more than welcome here is Christoph Waltz, who plays a priest hot on Dracula’s cape with a closely-clutched cross and wooden stake. He’s having a great time here, bringing his studious diction — hearing him pronounce “hematophagous” is a joy its own — and signature wit to the role; when a guard intimates, “A coffin, that’s the last place I’d want to sleep!” to the priest, he smirks back, “We all will one day.” Newcomer Zoë Bleu, the daughter of actress Rosanna Arquette, does well for her first time out in a dual role where her work is the lynchpin for the film’s emotional thrust. She has an off-kilter chemistry with Caleb Landry Jones, who isn’t a traditional leading man by any means but turns on the seductive charm where it counts. He’s also in the unenviable position of stacking up to Bill Skarsgård and his towering performance as the Dracula-adjacent Count Orlok in Nosferatu a little over a year ago.

For every inspired narrative choice Besson makes to differentiate his revamp from the coven of fellow Dracula renditions, there’s another that’s equally as ponderous. The most glaring example is the decision to include poorly-rendered CGI gargoyles that serve as underlings within Dracula’s fortress. A sequence where they chase an imprisoned Harker as he attempts to escape on the ice below the castle looks laughably bad, and lands on such a bathetic beat that I’m shocked it didn’t end up on the cutting room floor. There’s also a ridiculous montage where the stony henchmen zoom around Dracula and pile riches up high while the Count sits stone-faced at the end of an elongated dining room table. Those who prefer their vampire tales to have more romance than scares may fall for this Dracula but most will want to sink their fangs into a more balanced take on Stoker’s story.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Strangers: Chapter 3, starring Madelaine Petsch and Gabriel Basso, is a horror sequel concluding the slasher trilogy wherein the final girl squares off against the titular masked killers one last time.
Solo Mio, starring Kevin James and Alyson Hannigan, is a romantic dramedy in which a groom stranded at the altar for his destination wedding embarks on his planned honeymoon across Italy by himself.
Whistle, starring Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse, is a supernatural horror movie where a misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon an ancient Aztec Death Whistle that summons their future deaths to hunt them down.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Send Help

There’s technically only been a four-year gap between director Sam Raimi’s two most recent projects — 2022’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and his newest release Send Help — but in many ways, it feels like the first true “Sam Raimi” movie we’ve gotten since 2009’s Drag Me To Hell. Untethered by franchise restraints, be they Marvel or Oz-imposed (as with 2013’s Oz The Great And Powerful), he’s able to get back into the gleeful gross-out groove he’s perfected over the past 45 years. Those who have been waiting patiently for the director’s return to the world of unrepentant gore, squishy sound design and manic close-ups should find plenty in Send Help to scratch the itch. It may not quite be one’s top desert-island movie pick but it’s a ruggedly raucous remedy to a historically slow stretch of the movie year.

Rachel McAdams turns in delightfully unhinged work as Linda Liddle, a strategy and planning manager at Preston Strategic Solutions, who’s been quietly holding out years for a VP promotion. Her odds for advancement worsen when the CEO’s knavish son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes the reins from his late father. The two are en route to Bangkok for business when their corporate jet crashes near a desert island somewhere in the Pacific. As luck would have it, Linda is an experienced survivalist and proves much more useful in their stranded state than Bradley, who sustained a leg injury during the crash. He makes the mistake of assuming the power dynamic the pair had at their company, and it’s enough to say that Linda doesn’t take too kindly to Bradley’s chauvinistic demeanor and pushy attitude as they attempt to secure rescue.

Once Linda sets up camp for them, Send Help turns into a tense two-hander that recalls captivity thrillers like Misery and Hard Candy, even if Raimi’s film is markedly less subdued in its operation by comparison. Bradley’s entitled and arrogant personality more or less remains the same after the accident but once Linda washes ashore, a switch flips and the meek underling transforms into a confident outdoorswoman. A less repugnant boss would see her leadership skills as an asset but he’s stuck in the mentality that he wields power over her, even though org chart-hierarchy means nothing this far away from headquarters. An early montage, wherein Linda leaves Bradley to fend for himself after he insults her, portends the nastiness to transpire between them; “We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley,” she sternly reminds him upon her return.

Rachel McAdams has been superb in both comedic and dramatic realms over the past 20+ years but what she gives in Send Help has a exuberant ferocity and manic energy that we haven’t quite seen from her before. Not only is Linda more self-assured once she and Bradley are deserted but she lords her newfound power over him in a way that can turn our sympathy against her, even knowing how horribly she had been treated previously. In a more straight-laced rendering of this setup, Linda would turn into a heroine who overcomes her resentments but McAdams plays things more ambiguous morally, so the gulf between protagonist and antagonist isn’t large as one might expect. She and Dylan O’Brien also have believable romantic chemistry too, which lends itself to tonal textures that can shift from one moment to the next.

If anything, Sam Raimi stays in the “psychological game of wits” territory a bit too long before Send Help inevitably gets violent and he finally goes gonzo with the thing. The pacing before then feels a bit off, there’s a corny jump scare that seems included only to check the “horror” box on the genre list, and a couple of the plot developments are telegraphed a bit too obviously. But few directors revel in nasty practical effects more than Raimi and he certainly lets the blood and guts fly when it counts. Co-scribes Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who put their heads together for slashers Freddy Vs. Jason and 2009’s Friday The 13th, are likely more comfortable in that area too, although they do a nice job developing the stakes here beforehand. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another 17 years for the next Raimi film that actually feels like a product from his cheerfully demented brain.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Iron Lung, a sci-fi horror film starring Mark Fischbach and Caroline Rose Kaplan, adapts the submarine simulation video game in which a convict explores a blood ocean on a desolate moon using a watercraft to search for missing stars and planets.
Also coming to theaters is A Private Life, a comedy mystery starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, following a renowned psychiatrist as she mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
Premiering on Amazon Prime is The Wrecking Crew, an action comedy starring Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, in which two half-brothers, one a loose cannon cop and the other a disciplined Navy SEAL, must work together to unravel a conspiracy behind their father’s murder in Hawaii.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup