Origin starts with a reenactment of the final moments of Trayvon Martin’s life. This first scene cuts before his murder – it does play out later, in a very harrowing sequence that features the actual audio tapes of George Zimmerman’s 911 call – and moves shortly thereafter into several fascinating conversations about racism and what it actually means. This, apparently, was enough for some of the audience members in my screening, as several up and left within the first ten minutes. Of note was that everyone I saw leaving was white and of a certain age; I can only assume that an unflinching breach of one’s world view is enough to send some folks packing.
And that’s why we need movies like this.
The story here follows the real-life events that lead Isabel Wilkerson to write the best-selling nonfiction book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent – among them, the murder of Trayvon Martin, and several personal tragedies. What’s really, very fascinating about this movie (and about the book) is that Wilkerson builds her case around a divisive and incredibly critical thesis. Her claim is that the Holocaust, the Indian caste system, and American racism are all related, and that “racism” is actually an inaccurate term for what Black Americans are up against. (This is an incredibly simplified statement of her thesis - please listen to some of her interviews on this.)
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Wilkerson here, and her stunning portrayal of Wilkerson’s personal tragedies is staggering. The film intercuts the biographical aspect of the story with her research and journey towards the publication of Caste. Taking us to The Middle Passage, 1940s Germany, 1950s America, and 1950s India as we see the actions and movements that inform and support her thesis, the movie does not just tell us what Wilkerson is discovering, but shows it to us. Often accompanied by Kristopher Bowers’ moving score and voiceovers of Ellis-Taylor delivering passages from the book, these scenes make everything that Wilkerson researched and wrote about leap to visceral, often terrible, life.
This movie is very heavy, but with that weight comes an accompanying impact. Ava DuVernay (the director of the film) hits hard and does not shy away from making us uncomfortable – as with Wilkerson’s original thesis, sometimes that discomfort feels intentional, challenging us to open our minds enough to envelop such a daring idea as this. I personally am still processing and attempting to understand everything that the movie and the book are saying; I certainly will be obtaining a copy of the book in short order. I think that this movie is a magnificent way to interact with these ideas, and it’s a brilliant way to bring the thesis to a broader audience – it’s an unfortunate truth that a 2-hour movie will likely reach a far larger audience than a book of any length.
This is a really stunning work that I will be thinking about for a while.
If I counted correctly, the big guy shows up four times in this movie, and that is a-ok. The primary focus is on the human story here, with Godzilla being a driver for trauma and representative of the aftershocks of World War 2 on Japan (his atomic breath is more like an actual atomic bomb here). While I wish the writing was a bit more engaging, it’s still interesting enough that I never truly got bored - just excited for Godzilla to appear again. It asks what we really owe to our legacy, those we love, and even those that we don’t.
The action scenes are great; my favorite was a relatively pulse-pounding sequence reminiscent of Jaws, where Godzilla pursues a boat woefully unprepared to meet him as he dwarfs the vessel in frame. There are a few implausible things here (like some physics and survivability questions), but then again, we’re talking about a movie featuring a giant monster rising up out of the ocean. So I don’t judge too harshly.
One of my favorite things about Japanese Godzilla films is that they seem to treat the monster reverentially, portraying him almost as a sort of god or awesome, terrible divine power on Earth; and that makes him indescribably more scary. I say this in opposition of the American adaptations, which tend to commercialize and anthropomorphize the monster by grafting a sort of teammate-to-humans layer onto him. This is another great addition, and I highly recommend Shin Godzilla from 2016 as well if you’re in the monster mood!
Wish isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. There’s a sense of letdown for me here, probably because Disney touted this as a 100th anniversary crowning achievement, and it’s a pretty generic, run-of-the-mill fairy tale. There are sparks of whimsy that are lifted by references to other Disney films, which are fun (and they are manifold); but a string of Easter eggs do not make a movie.
The animation style didn’t bother me as much as I thought it was going to, but the colors were more washed-out and bland than other Disney features.
What DID stick out to me was the music. It’s bad. The prosody is TERRIBLE, and the lyrics not only seem to miss the mark so badly that it sounds like these songs were written at the last minute, but they’re so generic that they could have been written by AI trained to imitate a poor man’s Lin Manuel Miranda.
All this to say, I still shed a tear at the end, because Disney knows how to pull on heartstrings, hopes, and dreams and has for 100 years now. I just wish that, rather than a relatively shallow parade of references, we would have gotten a deeper and more subversive plot from the pretty good basis here to celebrate the centennial.
When my filmmaker friend told me this movie was the best thing he’d seen this year, I knew it had to be good. But wow, did it exceed my expectations. I agree - this is absolutely the best film I have seen this year.
From the top, you’re hit with the 1970s pastiche all over this movie and there’s an immediate coziness to it that never goes away. Whether we’re isolated at a New England boarding school with four characters over winter break or in the middle of Boston, there seems to be a sense of lived-in belonging that you just want to be a part of. (Perhaps part of that, for me, comes from a massive amount of nostalgia for a New England holiday season.)
All of the characters, for all of their flaws and quirks, are immediately likable - you want to know more about them, and the movie gives you that in the best, most natural way: through conversation, and sometimes, quiet moments alone. The three leads - Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph - bring such truth and humanity to their roles that you don’t want to separate from them.
The plot moves slowly, but the atmosphere and characters are the real draw here. Don’t get me wrong - this movie is FUNNY. Dry, yes, but I laughed a lot. I also cried a lot. This movie touches on abandonment, depression, loss, and the deprivation of potential - but also the power of conviction, connection, found family, and the power in the unknown laid out before you.
Definitely not what I expected from the trailers! While the comedic tone is definitely there, this is much more of a family history that spans decades and countries. We’re introduced to Leila at the start, but most of the movie is actually her mother’s story - and it works. I think the non-linear approach to the plot gets a little unfocused in several moments (we jump from early 2000s to the 80s to the 90s to the 60s - in that order), but it all connects in the end, which healthy conflict should always lead to, right? At its heart, this is a story about daughters, mothers, and the strain to understand one another across generations and cultures.
Disclaimer: I have never played these games, nor was I familiar with the franchise in any way going into the movie.
That being said - I just really don’t understand the bad rap this movie is getting! I overall enjoyed this movie for what it was: a relatively engaging PG-13 adaptation of a camp horror franchise.
I think we’re all familiar, at least, with the premise: a security officer working at a not-quite-Chucky-Cheese has to deal with the animatronics coming to life and becoming murderous machines. Succinct and self-contained. What I actually think this movie does well is delving into the lore behind WHY this is happening (which a quick search tells me has basis in the third game in the series). I initially thought this movie was taking itself way too seriously in a few moments, but given the background here, the tone is appropriately heavy at times. This stuff gets DARK and involves kidnapped and murdered children.
The family drama plot that this movie grows out of actually worked pretty well for me. I think it dovetails with the existing “dead kids possessing animatronics” story. Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but it doesn’t need to be. What I take issue with is some of the stuff that isn’t explained or addressed whatsoever. How did Mike end up with sole custody of his sister? What happened to their parents? (SPOILER: Why did the police officer help her father whatsoever?)
A complaint I’ve seen a lot of is about the level of gore, and I gotta say, I actually think it’s appropriate. Not every horror movie needs to be a hack-and-slash phantasmagoria of blood and guts. There’s just enough here to make you uncomfortable while also staying at the “camp” horror level.
In the end, we can say what we want, but this movie was made for a certain demographic that’s going to eat it up: teenagers with nothing better to do this Hallo-weekend that can’t get into rated-R films yet.
(I chose to watch it at home on Peacock for that very reason.)
This is one of those movies that absolutely requires you to watch until the last shot with intent, because it colors everything before it. However, hanging in to get there can be somewhat of a challenge.
The premise is interesting - in the not-too-far future, the earth is becoming uninhabitable, so the government is conscripting random citizens as test subjects for off-world habitats. They are, in some situations, replaced with AI bots of themselves. As a married couple are approached, they find only the husband has been selected. Their relationship is not a happy one, and the tests and questions involved in properly preparing the AI crack those marital problems wide open.
I do think that this movie loses focus and coherence in favor of some self-indulgence here (the same can be said about Paul Mescal's performance - it's awkward when you catch actors acting) but a reveal in the third act pulled my interest back in, and the ending sticks the landing. In what I assume is an intentional misdirect and attempt at mirroring the characters' confusion, the audience is sort of left wondering what the hell is going on and why this character is acting this way for a solid chunk of the movie; there's a way to do this, but Garth Davis didn't really nail it. What he did nail is a satisfying ending in spite of the clutter just previous to it.
He’s done it again, folks.
Mike Flanagan has again proven that he’s a master at what he does, creating a tragically stunning Frankenstein’s monster combining “Succession” and “Final Destination”. This series beautifully weaves in and out of Edgar Allan Poe’s canon, from his headliner works like “The Raven” and “The Telltale Heart” to the lesser-known ones such as “Gold Bug”. Names, locations, episode titles; it’s all in reference to Poe. Some inclusions are extremely clever in how they’re worked in (Rue Morgue) while some are not quite as smooth/slightly too anachronistic (the names Tamerlane and Prospero).
This series does feel quite different from Flanagan’s other Netflix projects in a few ways. It has more levity to it (though there still isn’t much) and it’s significantly more sprawling. Where his other shows have generally stayed focused on a small group of people in one location, House of Usher springs from locale to locale with a huge ensemble of characters (all marvelously portrayed by Flanagan’s usual coterie of actors, particularly Carla Gugino). It works spectacularly.
My only critique of the show is that, by the second episode’s end, you can see the formula that each episode is going to follow. I only wish there was slightly more surprise to it like Flanagan’s other works. However, despite a semi-foreseeable ending, the final episode still had me in tears, and some scenes throughout the series still viscerally shocked me.
This is a great addition to the Flanagan/Netflix canon - and just in time for Halloween.
This new queer movie was quietly released this past week and I think it’s absolutely worth a watch! Gary (Zachary Quinto) is a divorced gay man facing the end of his life who has finally decided to try to live a gay life. He hires Cameron (Lucas Gage) for a “massage” and things quickly go WAY off the rails as Cameron tries to thrust Gary into gay hookup culture. As absolutely madcap as this gets (an accidental death, the dark web, and an Ambien-riddled neighbor), the cast stays very small and focused, and ultimately culminates in a surprisingly emotional ending.
Lucas Gage is hilarious as an overt gay “guide” to Quinto’s straight man - watching their relationship develop is one of the biggest joys of this movie. Well, that, and Judith Light as a drug-addled neighbor who just needed to borrow some flour. She’s a gem.
While I think this is a relatively successful 2020s horror movie, I kind of fail to see it as comparable to or part of The Exorcist story. It has some fun horror moments, but what it lacks is the stillness that the original had. 50 years ago, we had a movie that focused on less than 5 characters and gave both them and the plot room to breathe as events evolved at a logical pace, which makes the ending exorcism extremely tense. In “Believer”, there are far too many characters and the plot rapidly accelerates as all of their threads vie for attention. The end result is an exorcism (of course) that feels abrupt and sort of low-stakes.
I like the philosophical questions asked here regarding all types of faith and how they approach possession and exorcism, giving us an interfaith effort to save the girls. However, I think the writing could have gone way deeper on this. Perhaps the next two movies in this trilogy will do so.
Two notes:
Why bring Chris MacNeil back, just to sideline her after 10 minutes of screen time?
I think using the actual, real-world Haitian earthquake as a jumping off point for the movie is in a bit of poor taste.
A genuinely funny raunchy comedy that also has a hefty scoop of feel-good in the mix! In addition to finally bringing Jennifer Lawrence back to acting, it’s also nice to see a comedy like this in theatres again, among all of the blockbusters and franchise installments. (Andrew Barth Feldman was also really good - his jump into screen work looks good for him.)
Visually stunning, with an incredible sense of scale, all in a fantastically realized future world, but a little emotionally stunted: I felt like there were several moments where the movie was telling me that I was supposed to be sad or distressed rather than letting me reach that conclusion on my own. Still a very thrilling experience - it feels real in a way that Star Wars and other big-budget sci-fi films never truly accomplish (because they’re not trying to).
Sidebar: a movie where we’re meant to empathize with AI seems a little…off, in terms of release timing. Specifically coming out of these strikes where it was such a sticking point.
You might think that the fifth installment of a horror franchise that began a decade ago might have run its course a while back, but you’d be pleasantly mistaken. The Red Door is surprisingly emotional and more rooted in fathers, sons, and family than it is spooky, scary ghosts (though not for lack of jump scares, which are abundant). The younger leads really shine here (Ty Simpkins and especially Sinclair Daniel). There’s a great sense of franchise conclusion, but as we all know with the horror genre - is it ever REALLY over?
Evidently continuing my trend of religious horror this week, this new movie is fascinating in that it’s religious horror that is, for once, NOT based on Catholicism. I don’t want to say too much, because it does a nice job of slowly revealing the basis for what’s going on to those unfamiliar with Hinduism, but it all also circulates around a strong theme of assimilation versus cultural identity.
Right off the bat, this was interesting because in the whole 90 minute runtime, I think this movie has two (?) lines of dialogue. And it works! (For the most part.) There are some really great tense scenes and the alien design is stereotypical - they literally look like the emoji - but they’re still frightening. My only qualm is that the final 10-15 minutes seems way too vague and falls into that trap of “the ending can mean whatever you want it to mean”.
Based on the book of the same name, this is a touching little movie all about the journey to self-discovery, but more importantly, self-acceptance. While there are a few moments of questionable acting, this movie takes some swings at showing how harsh and damaging of a journey it can be to finally understanding yourself - and it really hits the point hard. (Plus, it takes place in 1987 El Paso, and the boys’ wardrobes are fantastic.)
Heathers meets But I’m A Cheerleader for Gen Z - in the best way you can possibly imagine. Sexually charged, queer, violent, and absolutely hysterical, this is a new camp comedy that I HIGHLY recommend.
This was a ton of fun, and a clear redemption from Crystal Skull. The plot moves at a breakneck pace and the action is everything you could want from an Indiana Jones movie. A lot’s been said about the flashback sequence that starts the movie, and yes - the de-aging technology isn’t convincing (Indy looks a bit like a video game character in certain shots). But give me a globe-trotting adventure with ancient relics and yet another banger score by John Williams, and I’m happy.
A classic for a reason. Bloody disgusting effects that are astounding to this day - and all of them practical. Top-tier creature feature that left me squirming and my jaw on the floor.
This gentle little movie props itself up with a sci-fi premise of a UFO crashing in a senior citizen’s backyard, who then takes it to the town council - but that is certainly not what it’s about. As Milton (Ben Kingsley) handles the situation, he winds up navigating it with two other senior women (Harriet Samson Harris and Jane Curtin). What follows is a thoughtful picture of aging, human connection, and grasping of mortality. It’s also quietly hysterical; I highly recommend.
If your social media is anything like mine, you haven’t even heard of this movie because of Barbenheimer’s success and Haunted Mansion’s flop - and that’s a shame. This is a really well-written movie that follows a sort of slow-motion wreck of a relationship and someone coming to terms with their own flaws. There are a couple of sporadic moments of disengenuity in a few of the performances, but it’s funny, and the couple’s arguments are so naturally written that it almost feels invasive to watch them happen. If you can find a showing of this one, check it out while you can! It probably won’t be around for long.
This is an itty bitty movie that released back in April. It’s very tightly focused on the folks pictured here (environmental activists) as they execute a plan to destroy parts of a corporate oil pipeline in Texas (so yes, there’s plenty of social commentary). At critical moments, we’re tossed into flashbacks that show us how each member of the group was pushed to the point of radicalization that can justify this sort of action; the concept is great, but the execution of cutting away from tense moments robs them of a fair amount of their tension. Interesting, but not a must-see.
An appropriate number for this movie, huh? I went into this with a great deal of reservations, but I came out having had a great time. I think Disney struck a better balance between the spooky and the funny here than they did with the 2003 version. Disney Parks fans are going to LOVE the details here. The score was delightful with the recurring attraction motif throughout. I think it’s an odd choice to release this one in July, but they did it with Hocus Pocus in 1993, and look at that now (though Hocus Pocus is arguably a better movie). This gets a thumbs up from me (but keep in mind, I am a HUGE Disney fan, so your mileage may vary).
For the first 30 minutes of this movie, I was super excited by a very interesting take on the world of Bird Box; it expands on a small part of the first movie and deepens the lore quite a bit, giving a unique point of view from the protagonist and introducing religious influence. Unfortunately, as things go sideways for the characters, the plot lapses into generic territory and the focus on what was interesting gets abandoned in favor of a bland take on trauma.
Re: Barbenheimer
I think it’s a really rare thing when releases are SO eagerly anticipated and then so wholeheartedly deliver. I enjoyed both of these movies immensely for wildly different reasons; Barbie is a fantastically feminist, candy-colored camp fantasy that delivers laughs and thoughts on existentialism and humanity; and Oppenheimer is a dramatically dense, fast-paced character study that delivers dread and thoughts on…existentialism and humanity. Funny how the two meet there.
Aside from the movies themselves, it has been YEARS since a movie theatre has felt so electric as when my husband and I saw Barbie on Thursday night. The outfits and “Hi, Barbie!” exclamations left and right fed directly into a delightfully enthusiastic audience - and then I didn’t hear a peep during my Oppenheimer screening this evening, which is a far cry from the typical Friday night audience.
This has been my favorite week at the movies in a very long time.
Re: Barbenheimer
I think it’s a really rare thing when releases are SO eagerly anticipated and then so wholeheartedly deliver. I enjoyed both of these movies immensely for wildly different reasons; Barbie is a fantastically feminist, candy-colored camp fantasy that delivers laughs and thoughts on existentialism and humanity; and Oppenheimer is a dramatically dense, fast-paced character study that delivers dread and thoughts on…existentialism and humanity. Funny how the two meet there.
Aside from the movies themselves, it has been YEARS since a movie theatre has felt so electric as when my husband and I saw Barbie on Thursday night. The outfits and “Hi, Barbie!” exclamations left and right fed directly into a delightfully enthusiastic audience - and then I didn’t hear a peep during my Oppenheimer screening this evening, which is a far cry from the typical Friday night audience.
This has been my favorite week at the movies in a very long time.
This has been one of my favorite sci-fi/suspense movies since it opened 5 years ago and I love that it’s seeing a resurgence since being added to Netflix at the end of June. This one is complicated; it features deep layers of meaning, some tricky biological science regarding mutations, and it’s all wrapped in a horribly beautiful psychedelic iridescence. The production design is stellar. There’s also one of my favorite creature/monster moments of the 2010s here (the bear). Highly recommend (and the book trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer is VERY weird but interesting).
I went into this movie with low expectations because DC generally hasn’t delivered for me; I was pleasantly surprised! This is an adaptation of the Flashpoint comic event (which was also a great 2013 animated movie) that involves TONS of fan service moments while also telling a twisted (but not hard to follow) time travel paradox story that loops into multiversal contact. There’s some really, really rough CGI in many places, but the plot is engaging and moves quickly.
I’m fascinated and hopeful to see what comes next with the DC universe now under James Gunn’s control; I think that lack of total knowledge on “what comes next” for these characters and entire cinematic universe lends this movie some stakes that most superhero movies don’t usually get.
A character study featuring Oscar bait for Helen Mirren as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 19-day Yom Kippur War in 1973. Heavy with the implications of war, this one seems to move both too fast and too slow all at once. Context is the critical thing lacking in the writing here, but the hair and makeup team deserves accolades for stellar work.
