Infinity Pool, the new nightmare vision from Possessor writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, finds itself at the intersection of two thematic landscapes that have captured the zeitgeist as of late. Hit shows like The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers involve mystery and intrigue among vacationers on opulent resorts, while movies like The Menu and newly-minted Best Picture nominee Triangle Of Sadness satirize the entitlement of the ultra-wealthy. Even with these touch points intact, viewers should know that Cronenberg’s latest incorporates elements of body horror and hard sci-fi that push his film into territory that will likely make casual audiences uncomfortable. But those who go along for the ride will have their eyes widened and buttons pushed in a mostly productive fashion.

Though it was shot in Croatia, Infinity Pool takes place on the fictional island of Li Tolqa, where author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife of 10 years Em (Cleopatra Coleman) find themselves visiting an all-inclusive resort. While on the beach one day, James is approached by Gabi (Mia Goth), a fellow guest at the resort who professes to James her fandom of his first novel and invites the couple to dinner with her and hubby Alban (Jalil Lespert). The quartet are brought close together after an off-resort jaunt takes them to the crime-addled countryside but the drunken drive back to their hotel yields an unexpected tragedy. After facing charges for their crimes by the local police, an alternative solution of twisted metaphysical justice is proposed to atone for their sins.

The trailers put out by Infinity Pool‘s distributor NEON have given far too many plot details away but it’s enough to say that the fallout from James’ punishment binds him to a group of hedonistic tourists who have their run of the resort and the surrounding area. Cronenberg’s commentary on the super rich and their propensity to operate outside society’s rules isn’t overwhelmingly nuanced but the class critique is only part of what he has on his mind. As with Possessor, this is a film that is meant to provoke our sense of what it means to be human and to live our lives as prisoners inside our own bodies. We see James tempted with desires of the flesh and forced with the decision to either break the cycle of depravity or succumb to its machinations.

Skarsgård is a fine audience surrogate, being slowly drawn into this band of miscreants even after his wife hightails it back to the States and he conveniently can’t find his passport to join her. It’s a 180-degree shift from his testosterone-fueled titular role in The Northman last year, channeling his inner schlub as an emasculated and insecure writer desperate for another hit. Goth was outstanding in companion horror films X and Pearl last year and she continues her winning streak here with a role that starts simple and seductive but morphs into something more sadistic and, at times, hilariously over-the-top. A scene late in the film, in which Gabi is drinking wine on the hood of a very slow-moving car, is scathing and darkly funny but also menacing and deranged at the same time. As with the cinematography in the rest of the movie, DP Karim Hussain nails the claustrophobic close-ups in this sequence.

Though the look of Infinity Pool is far grimier and asymmetrical than the aesthetic Stanley Kubrick favored throughout his filmography, Cronenberg seems to either intentionally or unintentionally channel narrative threads from several of his projects. The criminal atrocities carried out by the privileged ne’er-do-wells ironically mirror the acts of ultraviolence committed by the impoverished droogs in A Clockwork Orange. There are psychedelic sequences — photosensitivity warnings at the beginning of movies and TV shows are becoming more common these days and Infinity Pool certainly earns its disclaimer — that carry overtones from both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut. Naturally, horror masterpiece The Shining is also referenced in shared themes including unraveling of identity and patterns of reincarnation. Infinity Pool may be too unpleasant for general audiences but its shock value is often matched by the heady ambition right below the surface.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Knock At The Cabin, a psychological horror movie starring Dave Bautista and Jonathan Groff about a family of three on vacation that is suddenly held hostage by four strangers who demand they sacrifice one of their own to avert the apocalypse
Also playing only in theaters is 80 For Brady, a sports comedy starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda depicting four elderly female friends as they travel to Houston to watch their hero Tom Brady and the New England Patriots play in Super Bowl LI.
Streaming on Netflix is True Spirit, a based-on-a-true-story adventure starring Teagan Croft and Anna Paquin about a tenacious Australian teen who chases her dreams and faces her fears as she sets out to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Playing at Cinema Center starting this weekend, the indie dramedy When You Finish Saving The World stars Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard as Ziggy Katz, a high school student desperately trying to discover himself. Using a live streaming platform called Hi-Hat, he routinely performs original music for his 20,000 Followers all over the world, which doesn’t quite register with his parents Evelyn (Julianne Moore) and Roger (Jay O. Sanders). Also underwhelmed by his online success is Lila (Alisha Boe), a fellow student that Ziggy has developed a crush on due to her impassioned lunchtime political exchanges. The film also follows Evelyn and her work at a domestic abuse shelter, where she attempts to make a connection with Kyle (Billy Bryk), the teenage son of a woman seeking refuge at the Spruce Haven shelter.

Though the film’s title is never actually uttered by any of the characters, the phrase that gives When You Finish Saving The World its name is fitting for a movie whose two primary protagonists are both unknowingly narcissistic and self-righteous. The central irony of the story is that despite this common ground, Ziggy and Evelyn have a stilted relationship where they just can’t seem to see themselves in one another. It’s obvious that the pair will reach some kind of reconciliation by the end of the brisk 87-minute runtime but thanks to a pithy script by writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, the journey getting there is piquant and piercing. Adapting from his Audible audio drama of the same name, Eisenberg restructures his story around the mother-son dysfunction that has the most narrative potency.

Along the way, When You Finish Saving The World pokes fun at the wince-inducing paths that young people often take in trying to figure out who they want to be. Ziggy and Lila meet up multiple times at a “Revolutionary Arts” gathering, a sort of open mic where over-earnest teens trade spoken-word and song-based offerings in an effort to one-up each other. “This is about the patriarchy, of which I’m a reluctant member,” a young boy dramatically laments before sharing a poem. When it’s Ziggy’s turn to perform an original tune, his lyrics about graduating and loneliness fall flat for an audience preening for something more sociopolitically enlightened. Still, he remains undeterred and his braggadocious passes at Lila contribute to the film’s finest moments of cringe comedy.

In juxtaposing his day-to-day with Evelyn’s, Eisenberg suggests that she isn’t any less guilty than her son of trying too hard when it comes to social interactions. She often comes off so severe to most that when she attempts to make small talk with a Spruce Haven secretary while waiting for an elevator, the receptionist feels the need to clarify that she’s not about to be terminated. Moore adds all sorts of touches to her performance that help us understand how someone so stern in their usual disposition could still come across as empathetic in specific contexts. She exudes the expected patience and understanding during intake with abuse survivors but when Ziggy says he needs “five seconds” to get ready, Evelyn looks down at her watch and counts to five in her head before walking out the door.

Though the film takes place in Indiana (Bloomington, specifically) and there are allusions to IU and the Pacers, When You Finish Saving The World was shot in both New Mexico and Canada, likely due to their respective tax incentives for the film industry. Eisenberg reportedly moved to Bloomington with his wife Anna during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and his newfound affection for the area and its people comes through in his directorial debut. It’s unfortunate that Indiana is 1 of 16 States that doesn’t currently extend tax incentive programs for film productions, even for smaller-budget projects like this one. Until that changes, Hoosiers will likely have to settle for the occasional movie like When You Finish Saving The World that is set here, even if it’s not actually shot in-state.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Missing, a screenlife thriller starring Storm Reid and Ken Leung about a teenager who begins using various technologies to find her missing mother after she disappears on vacation in Colombia with her then-new boyfriend.
Also playing in theaters is That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime: Scarlet Bond, an anime film starring Ricco Fajardo and Kristen McGuire which adapts the TV series about a super-powered being and his companions who get involved in a long-running conspiracy that swirls around a woman with a mysterious power.
Streaming on Netflix is JUNG_E, a science fiction movie starring Kang Soo-yeon and Kim Hyun-joo where the outcome of a civil war hinges on cloning the brain of an elite soldier to create a robot mercenary.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

There have been numerous cinematic adaptations of Carlo Collodi’s children’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio over the years, so perhaps it was inevitable that two would arrive in the same year. 3 months after Disney released a live-action “reimagining” of their own 1940 classic, Netflix responds with their own version of Pinocchio, a stop-motion effort co-directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro. I could compare and contrast these two movies for the rest of this review but the important takeaway is that Disney’s film is another cynical re-do that drains the life from its predecessor and while Netflix’s film isn’t a masterpiece, it’s leagues more inspired by comparison. As one would expect, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a darker and more complex tale but still carries out the original novel’s timeless themes.

This version of the story takes place in 1930s Italy, where woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) bitterly grieves over the loss of his only son due to an errant bomb dropping from a wartime plane. After a battle with the bottle one evening, Geppetto crafts a wooden puppet resembling his lost boy in a traumatized frenzy. In the middle of the night, a wood sprite (Tilda Swinton) gives life to the pine creation and when Geppetto wakes up, he meets Pinocchio (Gregory Mann), who sounds and behaves like his late son. In his effort to become a real boy, Pinocchio encounters the proverbial angel and devil on his wooden shoulders, in the form of Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) and Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), respectively.

Most of Pinocchio plays out in the way that you would expect from horror/dark fantasy maestro Guillermo del Toro putting his own twist on the classic fable. Reminiscent of his finest film Pan’s Labyrinth, the specters of war and ultra-nationalism loom large over this story about the good and evil of the world seen through the eyes of a young soul. Volpe’s carny huckster wouldn’t be out of place in last year’s Nightmare Alley and the sea-set finale with The Dogfish (named Monstro in the 1940 Disney version) recalls the marine creature work from Best Picture winner The Shape of Water. There’s inevitable Henry Selick influence in a recurring purgatorial gag and the associated appearances of Death (also voiced by Tilda Swinton) reminded me of the endlessly creepy Mysterious Stranger sequence from 1985’s The Adventures of Mark Twain.

Aside from being the umpteenth cinematic variation of this fairy tale, Pinocchio does commit some unforced errors that aren’t necessarily tied to its companion pieces. While the musical score by Alexandre Desplat is transportive, the songs sung by the characters feel like an afterthought and whiff of forced whimsy to counteract the film’s darker nature. Waltz is perfectly menacing as always in his villainous role but the overly-peppy voicework from Gregory Mann as the protagonist becomes grating and one-note after a while. There are also some inspired tertiary voice casting choices, like Cate Blanchett as a mostly non-verbal monkey and Tom Kenny (known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants) as Benito Mussolini The stop-motion figures and set designs are immaculate and filled with rich detail but some of the CG, especially the animation of children’s faces, pales in comparison to the traditionally rendered effects

Now that we’re towards the end of the year, it’s worth reflecting on how strong a year this has been for stop-motion animated features, even without a new film from Laika Studios. This is a strong foray into the genre by Guillermo del Toro and in addition to Pinocchio, Netflix alone has released two other stop-motion movies — The House way back in January and Wendell & Wild, more recently — that are excellent exemplifiers for the genre. When you include Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and Mad God, two films that couldn’t be more different in terms of subject matter and tone, you get a sense of just how varied of films this style of animation can produce. Stop motion is obviously a labor-intensive and meticulous breed of filmmaking but banner years like this one prove how vital the work can be to the world of cinema.

Score – 3.5/5

More movies coming this weekend:
Coming back to theaters is Father Stu: Reborn, a PG-13 cut of the titular drama released earlier this year starring Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson about a boxer-turned-Catholic priest who lives with a progressive muscle disorder.
Also playing only in theaters is The Mean One, a Christmas horror movie starring David Howard Thornton and Krystle Martin about a woman who witnesses her parents’ murder at the hands of a green monster as a child and seeks to avenge their deaths 20 years later.
Streaming on Apple TV+ is Emancipation, a historical action film starring Will Smith and Ben Foster about a runaway slave who forges through the swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey to escape plantation owners that nearly killed him.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Comedian Patton Oswalt has a hilarious bit titled “Great Food Is Cooked By Psychos”, in which he equates his past love for out-there authors and musicians to his recent adoration with worryingly eccentric chefs. It’s a notion that HBO’s Succession director Mark Mylod and The Onion alums Seth Reiss and Will Tracy must have had in mind when crafting the razor-sharp black comedy The Menu. As one would hope, the jokes in the film cut a bit deeper than “hey, isn’t it funny how tiny the portions are at fancy restaurants?” and get into why this kind of snobby subculture continues to thrive. When the movie starts to infuse more thriller and horror elements, it can sometimes get a bit out of its depth but overall, this is a devilishly fun dish.

We meet Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) as they board a boat with 10 others who are also traveling to Hawthorne, a luxury restaurant situated on a private island. Each couple is paying $2500 to savor a meal made by idiosyncratic celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) and his slavishly devoted kitchen staff. When the group arrives, they’re given a tour of the grounds by austere maître d’ Elsa (Hong Chau) before heading inside the lavishly designed restaurant. Chef Slowik’s introduction and the amuse-bouche seem normal enough but with each subsequent course, his preambles get stranger and the mood in the dining room gets more tense. Even though fanboy Tyler is still enraptured by the experience, Margot’s unwillingness to eat any of the prepared food draws Slowik’s ire and curiosity.

Pretentious foodies and the ultra-rich may make for soft targets in a satire but The Menu serves them their just desserts just the same. When the guests first arrive, the mood is not dissimilar from an Agatha Christie whodunnit but as the night goes on, the film turns into more of a playful dark comedy about the kinds of people who would pay this much for food. There’s the Anton Ego-esque food critic and her obsequious editor, a trio of techbros, a washed up actor with his assistant and a businessman and his wife, who converse as if they’re enjoying soup and breadsticks at Olive Garden. Even before Slowik sardonically dispenses with moral judgements about who these people are and why he suspects they’ve come, it’s clear none of them actually care about Slowik’s cooking in the first place.

But Margot wasn’t Tyler’s originally intended guest, which seems to concern Elsa right away and is brought to Slowik’s attention shortly after, so she is immediately seen as being outside of this typically sealed system. Fiennes and Taylor-Joy are outstanding scene partners as the chef calls Margot back to the kitchen for a series of terse conversations where they poke and prod at one another to gain understanding of their respective mindsets. Editor Christopher Tellefsen cuts these jagged-edge exchanges with a serrated knife but when the night gets more twisted, he moves to a butcher’s knife — punctuated by Slowik’s loud claps to introduce courses — to savor the intensity of the moment. Obviously, there are tantalizing (and occasionally ludicrous) plot developments you’ll want to avoid knowing specifics about going into the movie but suffice it to say, there are some delectable turns peppered throughout the film.

As much as this is a cheeky parable about the 1% and the people who serve them, The Menu is obviously a movie about the art of preparing food and all the emotions that come along with it. There is a scene of catharsis in this movie that recalls last year’s transcendent Pig, a film which is also set in the high-end restaurant scene but uses it as a way to gain understanding into how the characters live their lives once the meal is over. For most of its runtime, The Menu isn’t nearly that earnest and its primary aim is to skewer its band of obscenely rich patrons. As such, it’s a more superficial effort and not as satisfying as a movie that has more interest in its characters. But like a plate of burger and fries from your favorite fast food spot, The Menu will fill you up and put a smile on your face.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Fabelmans, starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, is a coming-of-age drama from Steven Spielberg about a teenager growing up in post-World War II era Arizona who aspires to become a filmmaker soon after discovering a shattering family secret.
Strange World, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid, is an animated sci-fi adventure following a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest and most crucial mission in the uncharted and treacherous land of Avalonia.
Devotion, starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell, is a biographical war drama which tells the true story of a pair of elite fighter pilots who became the U.S. Navy’s most celebrated wingmen during the Korean War.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

When Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was released 15 years ago, it skewered music biopics like Walk The Line and Ray so thoroughly that the subgenre was in danger of ever recovering. The comedy went on to inspire a fake trailer for a real music icon a few years later, a three-minute clip for a movie dubbed Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. But as the straight-faced music biopic came back with commercial hits like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis, so has the satire of the same subgenre. 12 years after the Funny or Die clip that teased a tongue-in-cheek look at “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life and career, we now have a full-length feature to match. Expanding from his original comedy short, director and co-writer Eric Appel throws a bushel of comedy concepts into his directorial debut with predominantly ripe results.

After an uneasy childhood with his father and mother (played by Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson, respectively), Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) moves away from home and tries to make it on his own as a musician. Making bologna sandwiches for his roommates one day while “My Sharona” plays on the radio, inspiration strikes and he replaces the original words with silly lyrics of his own. His newfound proclivity for parody songwriting catches the ear of Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), an eccentric radio broadcaster who offers to manage “Weird Al” (a stage name he comes up with for his new client) in his burgeoning career. The duo find that when Al spoofs a song, the original artists benefit from an increase in record sales and when Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) notices this “Yankovic Bump” phenomenon, she decides she wants in.

Where Walk Hard covered a fictional music icon in Dewey Cox, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story involves an artist who’s not only still alive but is still making music — a reminder: stay through all the end credits for some extra yuks. While the ludicrous exaggerations and hilarious falsehoods about how the real-life Al rose to fame are naturally the funniest aspects of the film, separating them from the nuggets of truth is good fun too. Some of the movie’s events, from a young Al becoming inspired to pick up the accordion from a door-to-door salesman to his first recording being done in a public bathroom, are actually true to life. On the other hand, one can assume a pool party Al attends with all manner of personal idols from drag queen Divine to surrealist artist Salvador Dalí didn’t quite occur as portrayed on-screen.

As ridiculous a scene as this seems, music biopics still stretch artistic license and try to get away with a milder version of these “fortuitous meetup” moments in their films. Weird also goofs on the “eureka!” beat to which we’ve become accustomed, a bit of dramatic irony where we in the audience know even more than our protagonist just how impactful a moment of inspiration will be for their journey. Not only does Al stare at a packet of bologna with growing intensity but the title words of “My Sharona” repeat over and over as he does, reminding us just how ham-fisted these “made-for-movie” moments can be. Some of the more broad comedy, like a subplot involving Al rescuing Madonna from the clutches of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, recalls the antics of real-life Al’s foray into movies with his 1989 cult classic UHF.

Adapting a fake trailer into a 100-minute movie comes with expected obstacles and there are points where Weird makes a better case for itself as an hour-long comedy special as opposed to a full-fledged film. Even though he’s thumbing his nose at the fall from grace and subsequent redemption arc we see in these narratives, Appel runs low on steam in the third act before landing things nicely with a final scene that sums things up in suitably outlandish fashion. When people watch comedies, they may note while watching the points at which the story gets in the way of the laughs but in retrospect, what matters most is the sequences where the humor truly clicks. Those who like their biopics to stick close to the facts will wince throughout Weird: The Al Yankovic Story but those who jive with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s playfully irreverent spirit will eat it up.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a Marvel superhero movie starring Letitia Wright and Lupita Nyong’o about the leaders of Wakanda fighting to protect their nation against invading forces from a hidden undersea city after King T’Challa’s death.
Streaming on Netflix is My Father’s Dragon, an animated fantasy starring Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo about a young runaway who searches for a captive dragon on Wild Island and finds much more than he could ever have anticipated.
Continuing at Cinema Center is Moonage Daydream, a documentary about rock iconoclast David Bowie compiled of live concert footage and previously unreleased footage from Bowie’s personal archives.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Capping off an uncommonly strong month for cinematic horror, the frightfest Smile stars Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychologist who’s been putting too many hours into her job at a New Jersey-based psychiatric ward. Right before ending her shift one day, she meets with disturbed PhD student Laura (Caitlin Stasey), who says she is being stalked by an evil grinning figure that takes the appearance of other people she knows. The appointment turns even more tragic and leaves Rose irrevocably shaken, to the growing concern of her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) and her boss Dr. Desai (Kal Penn). Rose begins seeing the malevolent entity that Laura described, prompting her to go to her policeman ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner) to find a chain connecting these “smiling” sightings that are now plaguing her.

Smile effectively combines two horror reliable subgenres: transmissible curse films like It Follows or The Ring — going further back, it most resembles the supernatural cop thriller Fallen — and personified trauma movies like Hereditary and The Night House. It also leans on a rich history of creepy cinematic smiles for chills, the most haunting of which still belongs to Conrad Veidt’s character from the silent picture The Man Who Laughs. Adapting from his short film Laura Hasn’t Slept, writer/director Parker Finn takes the material seriously but does have some fun playing with the audience’s expectations. This is a movie that shamelessly includes jump scares but, naturally, Finn’s hope is that their placement may still surprise you. When the camera stays on Cotter as she opens her refrigerator, will there be someone behind the door when she closes it?

As an overworked doctor already at her wit’s end before the film’s inciting event, Bacon is terrific at putting us in the mindset of someone whose grip on reality is slowly becoming more tenuous. Her screen presence and nervy resolve while being terrorized by a distorted-faced bogeyman remind me of Neve Campbell, who returned to the Scream franchise again earlier this year in the series’s fifth installment. As compared to the Scream films, the terror in Smile is more psychological in nature, since the characters around Cotter can’t see the horrifying creature that impersonates her friends and family. She reaches out to people she thinks she can trust, like her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser) and her therapist Dr. Northcott (Robin Weigert), but there’s no telling when the shapeshifting smirker could rear its smiling head.

Mental health is a subject that horror films have addressed responsibly and not-so-responsibly over the years — more recently, I would put 2022’s Abandoned in the latter category — but Smile builds it into the narrative sensitively and intelligently. As a child, Cotter witnessed her wayward mother overdose on unnamed prescription pills, leaving an indelible mark on her even as she treats patients going through the same sort of mental illnesses that afflicted her mom. The way that the film personifies the cyclical nature of traumatic events is disturbing and shocking at times but doesn’t feel exploitative of these characters or their issues. The people around Rose who know about her relationship with her mother assume that she’s succumbing to genetically-passed psychosis and Finn leaves the door open enough to suspect that they could be right.

Shot by DP Charlie Sarroff largely in shallow focus and with colors that look like they’ve had the life drained out of them, Smile is a admirably bleak affair that nevertheless finds purpose in its protagonist’s quest for vindication. Finn also sprinkles in typically innocuous smiles, like those found on families from vintage print ads or found on the lower end of the Wong-Baker pain scale, to perpetually unnerving effect. Being Finn’s full-length feature debut, the film could have benefitted from more judicious editing but in general, the pacing felt just right for a movie with a sadistically patient antagonist that waits for the right moment to strike. Beaming with a strong central performance and a potent concept, Smile is an elemental chiller that sinks its teeth in and never lets go.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Amsterdam, a mystery comedy starring Christian Bale and Margot Robbie involving three friends—a doctor, a nurse, and a lawyer—who become the prime suspects in the murder of a US Senator in the 1930s.
Also playing in theaters is Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, a musical comedy starring Shawn Mendes and Javier Bardem adapted from the popular children’s book about a family moving into a new home, where they find a singing saltwater crocodile living in the attic.
Premiering on Hulu is Hellraiser, a supernatural horror remake starring Odessa A’zion and Jamie Clayton about a young woman struggling with addiction who comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon evil extradimensional beings.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

When writer/director Ti West debuted his slasher film X at South By Southwest this past March, he announced that he secretly shot a prequel back-to-back with it that would fill in the backstory for X‘s elderly killer. Nine months later, we have Pearl, a horror movie as indebted to Technicolor melodramas of the 1950s as X was inspired by independently-produced slashers of the 1970s. Though this chapter takes place in 1918, when talkies hadn’t even been invented yet, West also taps into a golden age of Hollywood aesthetic with allusions to The Wizard of Oz and early Disney features. It’s in service of a villain origin story that generates a laudable amount of sympathy for its subject, mainly due to another outstanding performance from Mia Goth.

60 years before the events of X, the young Pearl (Goth) lives and works on a farm with her stern German immigrant mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) and her invalid father (Matthew Sunderland) while waiting for her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) to return from the Great War. Unsatisfied with the squalor of her circumstances, Pearl goes to the theater in town to watch the Palace Follies dancers and aspire to a more glamorous life. She meets a handsome projectionist (David Corenswet), who immediately takes a liking to her and encourages Pearl to pursue her dancing dreams. Pearl’s sister-in-law Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) informs her that a nearby church is holding auditions for a new chorus line member, which Pearl naturally sees as her ticket off the farm.

Even those who haven’t seen the companion piece X should be able to surmise that Pearl’s dreams of stardom don’t exactly pan out as she’d like but the film’s merits allow it to stand alone and make this a story worth delving into. While some of the early stylistic touches can come across as self-indulgent, which isn’t terribly out of character for West as a director, Pearl gradually begins to settle into itself as a sort of twisted fairy tale with themes similar to those in X about fame and fortune. There are other shared details with its sequel, from the screening of a stag film to the appearance of a certain hungry alligator, that should delight those who saw West’s previous effort. There are also numerous parallels drawn between the Spanish flu outbreak of the era to the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter of which actually helped West to pursue production for this unlikely prequel.

Goth, who co-wrote the Pearl script along with West, donned layers of makeup to play the older version of her character in X but is able to be much more expressive here as the ingénue-turned-murderer. As she performs tasks like feeding the farm animals or bathing her father, it almost seems like Goth could break out into an “I Want” Disney song at any moment, even though she also exhibits disturbing tendencies from the get-go. Her wide-eyed innocence giving way to madness reminded me of Shelley Duvall, particularly in her tormented performance from The Shining; one imagines Goth had an infinitely more enjoyable time making this movie. She does an excellent job getting us inside Pearl’s headspace, especially in a flawlessly-performed barn-burner of a third-act monologue which is presented in an unbroken take.

As he did during SXSW, West announced during Pearl‘s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month that X would get yet another entry in this series called MaXXXine, following the title character into the 1980s. Interestingly enough, Maxine was also played by Goth, meaning that her dual role in X will now have a prequel for one of the characters and a sequel for the other. It’s been quite a treat watching this peculiar trilogy emerge piece by piece as West and Goth find new ways to flesh out the flawed characters from this slasher series. Both films so far have leaned more heavily towards style than substance but then there are moments, like the aforementioned confessional monologue from Pearl or the “Landslide” sequence from X, that achieve unreserved beauty and wisdom. Horror often depicts humans at their worst but Pearl makes room for the hopes and desires that drive us to be better.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Don’t Worry Darling, a psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles about a 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community who begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.
Streaming on Peacock is Meet Cute, a romantic comedy starring Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson about a young woman who discovers a time machine in a nail salon and uses it to continually fix elements of a date she had the previous night.
Premiering on Apple TV+ is Sidney, a documentary honoring the legendary Sidney Poitier and his legacy as an iconic actor, filmmaker and activist at the center of Hollywood and the Civil Rights Movement.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year with the name 892, the now-retitled thriller Breaking introduces us to beleaguered Lance Corporal Brian Brown-Easley (played by John Boyega) as he’s being escorted by policemen in handcuffs. His appointment at the veteran’s affairs office one morning does not go as planned, ending with a physical outburst after being shorted desperately-needed funds due to unresolved school debt. Now facing the potential of homelessness for his family, Brown-Easley finds himself out of options and walks into a Wells Fargo bank carrying a backpack he says has an explosive device inside. Fast thinking by the bank’s manager Estel (Nicole Beharie) allows her to evacuate all the customers before his threat becomes known, leaving just her and teller Rosa (Selenis Leyva) on the premises with him.

But Brown-Easley makes it clear early on that he’s not out for some 6 or 7-figure score from the bank and that this isn’t a traditional robbery. He doesn’t want some bank’s money; he wants his money, the money that he’s owed, and he also wants the platform to tell his story to the media. When conversations with the negotiator outside (played by Jeffrey Donovan) stall out, he phones news reporter Lisa Larson (Connie Britton) as a lifeline to tap into what happened to him and why he’s doing this. Police outside finally get Brown-Easley in touch with Detective Bernard (the late Michael Kenneth Williams, in his final film role), a fellow Marine who starts to sympathize with his predicament and aims to get him out of the situation unharmed.

Along with his Red, White and Blue entry in 2020’s Small Axe anthology series, Breaking is a cogent argument for Boyega as an acting powerhouse following his three-film stint in the Star Wars universe. His Brown-Easley is understandably indignant about his circumstances and not above getting heated from time to time but for most of the film, Boyega makes a point of portraying him as polite and penitent during the bomb threat. I’m not sure I’ve seen another bank robbery movie where the robber says “sir” and “ma’am” this much and I’ve certainly never seen one where the robber takes a phone message from a customer for one of the tellers. Director and co-writer Abi Damaris Corbin leans a little too hard on the pathos (and pop culture references) involved in Brown-Easley talking on the phone with his young daughter but Boyega makes the moments in which they pray over the phone feel authentic and tragic.

Sadly, Breaking is based on a true story that occurred in August of 2017 and even if you don’t know before going into this movie how the actual events concluded in real life, a happy ending seems unlikely. Too often, Hollywood is late to the punch when addressing social issues that matter to people at the times that they matter most but the themes about racial inequality and the treatment of US veterans remain depressingly relevant. In fact, the inciting event of Brown-Easley’s actions being an unpaid student loan from a for-profit college suddenly became even more front-of-mind in the national conversation. This film is a reminder of what the best kinds of movies like this can do: take complicated and systemic issues around us and channel them through a few souls with whom we can empathize.

Corbin’s intentions are no doubt noble when telling this story and her message certainly gets across by the film’s conclusion but she does get swept up in some of the sensationalism inherent in this genre. The film is fittingly tense and generally well-rendered but some of the editing was a bit showy given the timbre of the story Corbin wants to tell. As with any movie based on a true story, dramatic license was likely used during certain moments of heightened emotion and a few scenes do feel like they’re straying a bit too far from realism. But the ensemble, which includes excellent performances from Beharie and Williams in addition to Boyega, carries the day and does this tragic tale justice. It may not be the easiest trip to the movies this summer but Breaking is a sobering reminder of how those who serve overseas are too often underserved when they come back home.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters and streaming on Peacock is Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul., a satirical comedy starring Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown about the first lady of a prominent megachurch who attempts to help her pastor-husband rebuild their congregation in the aftermath of a huge scandal.
Swinging back in theaters is Spider-Man: No Way Home – The More Fun Stuff Version, an extended cut of last year’s box office champion which features 11 minutes of additional and deleted scenes to the superhero flick.
Premiering on Netflix is Ivy + Bean, a children’s comedy starring Keslee Blalock and Madison Skye Validum about an adventure that kindles a friendship between two very different girls: the scrappy and fearless Bean, and the thoughtful and quiet Ivy.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Ten years ago, writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill teamed up with actor Ethan Hawke to make Sinister, a first-rate supernatural chiller about a true-crime writer who gets too close to the evil that inspires his work. Now the trio reunites for The Black Phone, another horror project that doesn’t quite have Sinister‘s supreme scares but proves that the chemistry established from that film was far from a fluke. Based on a short story of the same name from Joe Hill, whose father Stephen King has dabbled in horror fiction from time to time, the movie extrapolates from its conceit with unbearably tense setpieces and an evocative sense of setting.

The time and place is 1978 Denver, where teen siblings Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) endure family life with an abusive father (Jeremy Davies) while fending off bullies at school. To make matters worse, children have been disappearing all over the community with an abductor nicknamed The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) to blame for the disappearances. Finney tries to be careful but is nonetheless taken by The Grabber, waking up in a basement with little except a bare mattress and a disconnected landline. Hope seems lost, until the phone mysteriously rings early in Finney’s kidnapping, with one of The Grabber’s previous victims on the other line with instructions on how to get out alive.

Bleak but not without some well-earned moments of levity, The Black Phone fearlessly takes on difficult subject material that lesser horror movies might try to skirt around or avoid entirely. Derrickson sheds the rose-colored glasses that can be associated with this time period and reminds us early and often that life for kids back then could be downright brutal at times. The constant threat of a schoolyard pummeling is enough to make some of the boys overcompensate when it comes time to fight back; an early scene depicts a new kid whaling on a would-be bully far past a reasonable stopping point, just to make a statement. Tragically, this violence is often learned first at home and the broken families of abused or neglected children produce perfect victims for The Grabber.

Though it’s not a traditional tale of empowerment, the thesis of The Black Phone revolves around persevering through cruel circumstances and coming out the other end a stronger person. The premise of someone communicating with the dead and learning from their mistakes is a nice plot device for Finney to keep his head up during his abduction and simply work the problem. It’s not until the very end that it’s revealed how the bits of advice he gets from The Grabber’s abductees will help Finney escape but when each piece snaps together, it’s quite satisfying for both the protagonist and us in the audience. In the meantime, Hawke makes a meal of his immensely creepy killer character, sporting a two-piece mask that should be a hit when Halloween rolls around in a few months.

Some of the plot elements that don’t directly involve the game of wits between Finney and The Grabber aren’t quite as strong. The subplot surrounding Gwen’s psychic abilities that she inherited from her mother has some strong character moments but stretches credulity in the way that it affects the narrative. Put more frankly: I have trouble believing an entire police force would follow the visions of a teen girl as opposed to tracking down The Grabber with more concrete evidence. Elsewhere, it was nice to see Blumhouse regular James Ransone pop up but his character and his bearing on the plot make way less sense than the myriad supernatural events at play. Nevertheless, The Black Phone is a strong spookfest with compelling acting and a genuine sense of menace.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Thor: Love and Thunder, a Marvel superhero movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman which finds the god of thunder re-teaming with Valkyrie and Korg to take on Gorr the God Butcher.
Streaming on Netflix is The Sea Beast, an animated adventure starring Karl Urban and Zaris-Angel Hator about a legendary sea monster hunter who has an epiphany when a stowaway girl befriends the most dangerous monster of all.
Also streaming on Netflix is Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between, a teen romance starring Talia Ryder and Jordan Fisher about a high school couple who go on one last epic date in both familiar and unexpected places after making a pact to break up before college.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

After taking CODA all the way to Best Picture Oscar gold earlier this year, Apple TV+ continues their trend of putting down serious cash to acquire wholesome hits out of the Sundance Film Festival. Though Cha Cha Real Smooth didn’t quite score the $25 million price tag that the streamer shelled out last year, $15 million is still a chunk of change to put down for distribution rights of a movie titled after lyrics from a DJ Casper song. It turns out to be another laudable purchase from the formidable streaming service, by virtue of being in their wheelhouse of magnanimous entertainment and in line with their quality-over-quantity pattern of content development. Putting the business aspects aside, it’s simply a sweet movie with a smart script and two winning leads.

Cha Cha Real Smooth follows amiable and adorable twentysomething Andrew (Cooper Raiff) as he toils away at food court oddity Meat Sticks while living with his mom (Leslie Mann) and his stepdad Greg (Brad Garrett). While taking his teenage brother David (Evan Assante) to a bat mitzvah, he inspires young mother Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt) to hit the dance floor and get funky to “Funkytown”. Andrew takes this as a cue to try his hand at becoming a party host and professional DJ for the mitzvahs to come, while also helping take care of Lola while Domino’s fiancé Joseph (Raúl Castillo) is perpetually out of town on business.

The 24-year-old Raiff, who is also the writer and director of Cha Cha Real Smooth, has an infectious energy and youthful exuberance that comes across in both his performance and his filmmaking. The sharp screenplay allows us to gain insight on who Andrew is by the instant and lasting connections he forms with those around him. By the time he and Domino have their second and third conversations, it seems like these two have known each other for years. Andrew’s boyish charm almost makes him seem too good to be true at times but Raiff shades him with moments of ugliness, like his not-so-subtle jabs at his stepfather, that show the downside of being so demonstrative. “I know how to soft-step,” he drunkenly details to Domino one evening. “I just don’t want to right now.”

The inevitable romance between Andrew and Domino is necessarily given the most amount of screen time in Cha Cha Real Smooth but Raiff finds pivotal moments for Andrew to share with all the main characters where they truly see each other. Even though Andrew isn’t exactly someone who is in a position to give out life advice, his younger brother David still giddily looks up to him for tips about how to get through middle school. There’s a conversation Andrew has with his mother late in the film that is so open-hearted, gracious and downright sweet that she jokingly asks him if he’s trying to kill her as she tears up. Andrew’s interactions with Joseph are understandably awkward and even terse but their final scene together underscores how these two men with different backgrounds and sensibilities have found common ground.

Johnson, who also serves as a co-producer, has become something of a star in the indie movie circuit since her work in the Fifty Shades trilogy and she delivers another well-calibrated performance here. Domino has a push-pull relationship with Andrew where she’s withholding one minute and unmistakably flirtatious the next. Raiff and Johnson have a palpable chemistry that makes their time together feel vibrant, even if we’ve seen these story beats in other romantic dramedies before. The film’s overall arc is familiar as well and even though it’s still enjoyable, I hope Raiff is able to push himself even more artistically in his next effort. Big-hearted and bright, Cha Cha Real Smooth is a charming and charismatic film that, indeed, goes down real smooth.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Opening only in theaters is Lightyear, an animated adventure starring Chris Evans and Keke Palmer that serves as an origin story for the Buzz Lightyear space ranger character that inspired the correlated toy from the Toy Story films.
Streaming on Netflix is Spiderhead, a sci-fi thriller starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller about two convicts living in a near-future society where prisoners can reduce their sentence time by volunteering for experiments using emotion-altering drugs
Premiering on Hulu is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a romantic comedy starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack exploring the relationship that develops between a retired widow and a young male prostitute after their initial tryst.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup