The auteur director behind Fruitvale Station deliriously detours from his Wakanda and Creed franchise universes for an original passion project: Sinners (A) is Ryan Coogler unleashed, a polished and imaginative production of a writer/director at the peak of his powers. There’s an extended sequence – and you’ll know what it is when you encounter it – of such accelerating atmosphere and transcendent beauty and surprise, you might feel like your mind just played tricks on you. Think “The Devil Came Down to Georgia” by way of Edgar Allan Poe. Coogler’s slow-burn placemaking of the American South in the 30s lends both specificity and spellbinding otherworldliness to his mystery box of a genre-hopper. The filmmaker’s man-muse Michael B. Jordan is terrific in the dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, former soldiers and Chicago gangland fixtures with something to prove as they return to their rural hometown origins to ostensibly stand up a juke joint and mentor their musically gifted cousin, a sharecropper and preacher’s son played by R&B prodigy Miles Caton, one of the film’s exquisite sonic discoveries. Incidentally Jordan’s two characters are two sides of an unlucky penny and splendidly rendered, high on the actor’s double star wattage. Some other ensemble members are blissfully reborn in their roles, namely Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku as feisty connectors between cultural worlds. Delroy Lindo is a welcome veteran portraying the town drunk trope with Shakespearean panache, and Jack O’Connor gives lulling lift to a character conjuring cinematic spirits in what feels like nothing short of a battle of the bands in its undercurrent. Coogler applies his eye for epic storytelling in a film marked by characters with preternatural abilities colliding with supernatural scope. Ludwig Göransson’s blues and bluegrass fusion score is intoxicating, as is the sound design undergirding each dramatic line of sinister and sometimes sexy dialogue. The film’s characters are wily magnets for fascinations of the flesh, and its world builder rarely holds back in pursuing his pulpy ambitions. Autumn Durand Arkapaw’s superb cinematography, shot on 65mm film using a combination of IMAX 15-perf 70mm and Ultra Panavision 70mm cameras, with alternating aspect ratios, provides the perfectly shape-shifting proscenium for a night out like no other. Suffice it to say this film is a no holds barred powder-keg of cinematic excellence with layers of sly subtext fit for decoding and an entertaining surface to simply be relished. Experience this communal discovery in as colossal a theatre as you can access.
A genre defying film that’s part romance, part satire, part horror, part fantasy, part whodunit and parts unknown, Drew Hancock’s Companion (B+) confronts the dynamics of modern relationships in fierce and twisty ways. Set in a lavish weekend getaway mountain home, the gathered ensemble is game for the occasion: Sophie Thatcher as a troubled companion to everyman Jack Quaid; Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillen as blissful gay partners; and Megan Suri as unconventional gangster moll to a mysterious and married Rupert Friend. Some secrets and blood are spilled in a story that will keep people guessing. The narrative gleefully continues to reframe itself as more layers are revealed. Viewers also discover a technology component capable of shifting the characters’ destinies. Hancock has a good deal of creativity up his sleeve as gender and power dynamics unfurl in his wily wilderness. Thatcher is a natural as a character getting a strange feeling about her vacation mates, and Quaid gives off an effortless affable quality. The film is not so terribly bloody or scary as to keep away the casually curious. It does, however, lose a little steam toward the end. Overall this unassuming and brisk movie will reward those seeking a mainstream film with some thematic travels down some surprising paths.
Here’s some spoiler-free fan art I made with the Leonardo.AI app after contemplating the movie a while:
Oh, another bite at the Dracula story! Nosferatu (B-), the remake of the 1922 German classic directed in 2024 by Robert Eggers, chronicles the obsessive 1838 story between the Transylvanian thirst trap (Bill Skarsgard) and a haunted damsel (Lily-Rose Depp) in a picturesque pageant of dread and horror across Europe. There’s lots of slow-burn mood setting and stunning Jarin Blaschke cinematography in this crafts cavalcade. Baroque production design, exquisite costuming and creative makeup effects aside, though, there’s very little added to this tale as old as time. Eggers, so incredibly innovative in most of his works, has a sixth sense for this sort of story but doesn’t fully bring his fully unhinged and twisted sensibility to this affair. What he delivers is a perfectly preserved revival and rendition but not a new definitive one. The camera loves Depp, and there are a few fun scares. It’s just a little low stakes.
Hugh Grant plays against type as a creepy arbiter of a horrific escape room where he mansplains to two female Mormon missionaries the limits of faith in Bryan Woods and Scott Beck’s Heretic (B-). It’s a strange little movie, ostensibly in the horror genre but often so talky and obtuse that it might as well be a three-hander play. Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher are superb and highly believable as their characters negotiate with the man who may be their captor. They make realistic moves and are whip smart against a crafty antagonist. As “Mr. Reed,” Grant leverages his romcom charm to diabolical effect; his character may be a bit more cultured than boogeymen in Halloween or hockey masks, but he’s just as intense. The film is an exploration of the lore and belief systems of religion, powered by a smart premise and solid acting, and makes for an intriguing watch. But those expecting wall-to-wall thrills will likely find themselves underwhelmed.
In a season of crazy conspiracies, extended delirious dancing and popular public figures melting under spotlights and scrutiny (describing not just the current political race but recent plots of Trap andThe Substance), Parker Finn’s Smile 2 (B-) mostly delivers on its gonzo premise: that life as a global music icon is akin to enduring a perpetual horror movie. All eyes are on expressive actress Naomi Scott whose central pop princess character embodies all the requisite tropes: a raving fanbase, a beloved songbook, rumors, scandal, addiction, exhaustion and the company of a questionable squad from before the fame era. Finn as writer/director poses the question: What if those crazed demonic grinning faces popularized in his surprise 2022 hit film were just par for the world tour? In the age of the trauma narrative, why can’t the final girl victim simply be tortured for most of the film’s running time? And stage moms, crazed fans, paparazzi, even product placements are all the glaring, encroaching objets de terreur. It’s all overwhelming enough to make a mere mortal feel more comfortably numb than Pink Floyd in a hotel room adorned with lots of glass coffee tables. Revisiting this franchise’s formula meant re-imagining it, and Finn’s candid camera captures an ornate and jump scare filled glam paradise. After an awesome cold open set far from the neon lights, the film’s biggest surprise is there frankly aren’t many. With full “who’s afraid of little old me” gusto, Naomi Scott magnificently chews the scenery of life on the wicked stage and conjures myriad ways to generate poses of sheer fright. Scott bears the film’s repetitive burden on her shoulders and makes it all look good in lavish costumes and with pretty authentic songs. Only some of it is actually scary. It’s all highly watchable but could have used judicious edits to be a bit more, well, swift. Still, in a world of recent auteurs adding song and dance to supercharge their fever dream sequels, Finn hits most of his marks.
It’s generally cause for distress when your enchanted pumpkin carriage or lovable Mogwai has overextended forbidden activities beyond midnight. But age-old adages about the exact time when perceived Hollywood beauty expires go into audacious overtime in the contemporary satirical body horror film The Substance (A), written, directed and co-edited with glorious gore and gusto by Coralie Fargeat. A stunning Demi Moore lunges into a memorable central performance as a driven 50-year-old TV aerobics superstar facing career decline and experimenting with a black market medical regimen billed as a fountain of youth. Margaret Qualley occupies a symbiotic doppelganger role, an object of fantasy and fury in delicate balance with the leading lady. Both actresses are incredible in their mirror-image parts on various ends of the glamor spectrum, and it’s clear from how game they are in service to Fargeat’s vision that they are pursuing their roles with zero vanity. There are jaw-dropping sequences of blood and bombast, but the film’s watershed moment involves Moore’s character at the looking-glass, hesitating in numerous bittersweet ways as she prepares for a date because she doesn’t feel pretty. Benjamin Kracun’s candy-colored cinematography and Raffertie’s explosive score complement the outstanding 29-member makeup department and Emmanuelle Youchnovski’s standout costumes. Dennis Quaid and other male characters in the film are written quite broadly, which works well as parody but generates a distancing effect to interactions. Frequent allegory paints with a thick brush over a few inconvenient plot points. The overall grotesquerie will please ardent Fangoria Magazine readers but could turn away other viewers who would savor the fresh commentary. With her singularity of vision and hypnotic, horrific stylings, Fargeat invites comparisons to Kubrick, Cronenberg and De Palma but ironically could have nipped and tucked a few impulses causing the film to wear out its welcome long after making its point. This film itself is far from a fading star!
Just two years after the disturbing Danish horror film of the same name, a twisty and much more broadly comic 2024 American remake of Speak No Evil (B-) provides a highly watchable cautionary tale about two families who become friends on vacation and discover an altogether different relationship when they reunite on one couple’s home turf. James Watkins adapts the story from the austere foreign language template and directs this new version with gusto, offering a witty waltz through modern mores in which tensions rise on the grounds of a remote farmhouse. James McAvoy is the larger than life standout of the story as a burly alpha male who looks like he wandered off the set of a Brawny commercial. The actor relishes the wily role and brings a smoldering menace to the tale, dialing up the gamesmanship until the film’s flimsy final act. Scoot McNairy is effective in a thankless part as the wimpy, reticent foil, and Mackenzie Davis is far more interesting and nuanced as his sometimes steely spouse. The film is less an exercise in terror than a mash-up of comedy of manners conventions and home invasion conceits. The child actors land some intriguing moments in their own right as the fractured families realize their escalating riffs until all are rendered mute. The plot gets far-fetched and careens deeply into high camp, devolving from competent paranoid thriller into a “throw everything including the kitchen sink” showdown. All the while, McAvoy makes his mark, including some witty role play in a restaurant and crooning ballads of ’80s pop songstresses. If you like watching awkwardness get amplified, see this flick in a packed theatre and expect a surround sound of bewildered reactions at many characters’ bad decisions. It’ll have you at “oh, hell no.”
Director Tim Burton raises an undead franchise with a story so sputtering it seems more like a merciless cash grab than a creative revisit to the ghastly scene of the crime. Despite the nostalgia factor reserved for the 1988 original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (C-) offers too little too late as characters return to their countryside home for more adventures in and out of the afterlife. The big surprise is Michael Keaton, three decades after originating an iconic mischievous performance as the titular demon, doesn’t miss a beat in picking up where he left off in his high jinks; he’s largely an underused comic delight and gets to partake in a gaggle of fun gags including one in a foreign language. Winona Ryder (her character now a reality show ghost hunter) and Catherine O’Hara (still a dotty artist and stepmom who is rarely home alone) reprise their roles too with flickers of gusto but are overshadowed by Jenna Ortega as a new protagonist with some far fresher takes. The first hour of the film suffers from exposition overload, with obtuse explanations – some pithy and some prolonged – as to why certain characters aren’t present in this episode. The second hour is largely unexpurgated madness and mayhem, with frivolous plot points featuring Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci going absolutely nowhere fast. Thankfully sight gags and sing-a-longs are stitched together in the final act for old times’ sake, equal parts fringe and cringe. The humor and gore are sometimes a bit darker than the first, but the movie’s devil-may-care spirit consistently conveys it’s not working all that hard to impress. There’s a twist or two and a bit of novelty at the very end that stand out, but mostly the movie feels like returning to one’s old haunts where nothing is functioning as effectively as it did before. Even Danny Elfman’s music only comes alive when riffing on past themes. After all these years, Burton still loses track of story in service of shiny objects, even if some are clever indeed. This sequel may appear in some ways like a dead ringer full of zingers akin to the first film; but it mainly plays like a sketch stretched out to feature movie length.
A tightrope wire of unsettling mood and ominous dread, writer/director Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs (B+) is fairly certain to secure its place as the year’s iconic horror movie. Maika Monroe is magnificent in a very controlled performance as an FBI agent with psychic skills assigned to a decades-spanning unsolved serial killer case with evidence of the occult. Blair Underwood is effective as her by-the-books boss and Alicia Whitt memorable as her concerned mother, but it’s Nicolas Cage as the incredibly creepy title character who steals his brief but indelible showpiece sequences under unrecognizable prosthetics. He’s unhinged in all the best ways. Our protagonist heroine discovers a personal connection to Longlegs and endeavors to stop him before he strikes again. The film reveals its mysteries at a deliberate pace and maintains a singular vision including immersive cinematography by Andrés Arochi punctuated by Zilgi’s spellbinding music. Perkins doesn’t lunge for obvious jump scares but instead maintains a terrifying tone for most of the film’s duration, with many of the film’s shocks occurring in broad daylight. His blend of supernatural and psychological suspense pairs nicely with horrifying imagery of brutal carnage, porcelain dolls and bygone nostalgia of seemingly innocent bucolic days. It’s an eerie tale well told.
The third film of director Ti West’s stylish trilogy departs the Texas terrain of chainsaw massacre homage (X) and Technicolor melodrama pastiche (Pearl) to culminate in a 1980’s-set Hollywood thriller vibe, but alas MaXXXine (D) loses its novelty fast. Aside from nailing the nostalgia and period detail of the mean streets and backlots of a drug-fueled horned-up Los Angeles, West’s latest movie rarely rises above base camp. Mia Goth, so mesmerizing in previous installments, is rather ho-hum as final girl “Maxine Minx” pursuing fame and fortune in what she hopes will be the crossover horror film role from all the pulp friction of her career in the adult-oriented movie milieu. Flashbacks to the first film interfere with the pacing and don’t do much to build character; what could have been fun, funny or subversive comes off as generally mundane. While honing her craft, Maxine must fend off the advances of a mystery nocturnal serial killer, a sleazy investigator (Kevin Bacon) a mercurial director (Elizabeth Debicki), a hapless cop (Bobby Cannavale) and more, but the flimsy story and script do no one in the ensemble any favors; and the final reel is embarrassingly shot. Frequent long shots and split screens attempt to evoke a Brian De Palma aesthetic, but there are scant thrills and even fewer kills. A constantly shifting tone and confounding character intentions will prompt most folks beyond the most patient viewers to lose interest. This trio of films came on strong with creativity and cunning and now ends with an uninspired whimper.
Reviews of the first two much better films in this trilogy:
In a cinematic year filled with logline leftovers based on Air Jordan sneakers, Blackberry devices and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, moviegoers can express guilty pleasure and gratitude for a film adapted from its own Grindhouse mock trailer. Expect to preview coming attractions for a surefire franchise-in-the-making because Eli Roth’s latest scrappy, schlocky and overstuffed horror movie is certain to become a perennial feast: this first Thanksgiving (B-) film with a Final Girl delivers a multi-course cornucopia of clever kills. The movie’s cold open foists viewers into the mayhem and satirical delirium of a Black Friday sale riot that ends in a bargain-hunting bloodbath; a year later, in a related revenge storyline, a sextet of precocious Plymouth Rock teenagers try to avert a mysterious serial killer intent on creating a carving board of the Massachusetts town’s denizens. Nell Verlaque is a bright and nuanced lead actress supported by an ensemble of familiar faces such as Patrick Dempsey (yikes, that terrible Boston accent!) and Gina Gershon (mercifully muted) in supporting roles. The film is exactly as advertised – a Scream-style thriller mystery festooned in harvest season accoutrements, from pitchforks to parades. In the film genre of splatter films set on gory days, this is much more mid-tier slasher à la Happy Birthday to Me than rising to Halloween masterpiece levels. The story contains genuine jump scares, grisly murders of the bloody disgusting variety and ribald belly laughs. The film’s veritable turkey trot of graphic violence is so mercilessly cartoonish, it makes Cocaine Bear look downright avant garde. There’s an inspired moment when the heroine hides from the masked “John Carver” among mannequin heads in a beauty school classroom and employs hairspray as impromptu mace. Roth paces the film with finesse and fury and continually raises the stakes; he never mistakenly confuses his film with high art. Sure some elements are undercooked, but it’s ultimately a cavalcade of communal gasps. Buckle up, pilgrims, for high-camp, high-stakes, horned-up plenty.
If Halloween and Back to the Future had a love child, it would be Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer (C+); and in terms of radical surprises, this comic horror movie has very few flux (capacitors) to give. The contemporary teen protagonist, played by a funny deadpan Kiernan Shipka, must go back in time to the 1980s to avert a killing spree affecting her loved ones. Olivia Holt is effective as the heroine’s teenage version of her mother, and Julie Bowen is entertaining as mom in the modern day. There are some clever time travel conceits, nifty needle drops and funny asides about what passed for acceptable a generation or two ago, but there’s not quite enough here – including few scares – to warrant a strong recommendation. The “Sweet Sixteen” murderer clad in a Max Headroom style mask won’t likely enter the pantheon of killer classics, but the acting skills of Shipka portend more opportunities for uncanny comedy ahead.
