This Is a Movie Review: ‘A Simple Favor’ Might Just Be the Most Delightful Missing Girl Movie Ever

September 15, 2018

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CREDIT: Peter Iovino/Lionsgate

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Aparna Nancherla, Kelly McCormack

Director: Paul Feig

Running Time: 117 Minutes

Rating: R for Aggressive Nude Paintings, Plenty of Oopsie Words, a Few Gunshots, and a Little Bit of Skinny Dipping

Release Date: September 14, 2018

What if the most super-prepared overachieving mom started hanging out with the scariest, most workaholic mom who never shows up to any classroom activities? As Andrew Rannells, the ringleader of A Simple Favor‘s Greek chorus of catty parents puts it, she’s going to eat her alive. But in fact prudish mommy blogger Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and altogether aggressive fashion P.R. exec Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) become fast friends. They may be the oddest of odd couples, but their chemistry is sparkling and intense. Emily carelessly swears (quite hilariously) in front of her young son and swills afternoon martinis, which is miles beyond any life Stephanie has ever lived. But her unapologetic nature is intoxicating, and Stephanie is happy to latch onto the rare opportunity of discovering true friendship in adulthood.

Stephanie and Emily drinking away the afternoons could be an excellent formula for a twisted sitcom. But Emily, naturally enough, has her secrets, and this story is about her disappearance, and Stephanie grappling with how there is so much she doesn’t know about her friend and how she was always profoundly mysterious for as long as she’s known her. The black comedy of the first half gradually fades away, with Stephanie’s amateur sleuthing signaling a turn into high camp as she starts uncovering some key information.

It all culminates in Stephanie, Emily, and Emily’s husband Sean (Henry Golding) overdramatically play-acting the roles in the ridiculously over-the-top tale of intrigue that they are actually living. The switch between tones is such a hard swerve and a little disorienting. But I am willing to forgive that and call A Simple Favor a rousing success because Kendrick, Lively, and director Paul Feig are so adept at handling both tones, and because there are some genuine lessons about how to be a good, attentive parent in there. That level of grounding is what makes a domestic fantasy like this endure.

A Simple Favor is Recommended If You Like: Gone Girl, Mommy blogs and vlogs, Making fun of mommy blogs and vlogs, Yé-yé music

Grade: 4 out of 5 Real Martinis

This Is a Movie Review: Shane Black’s Version of ‘The Predator’ Has Some Interesting Ideas, But It Could Have Benefited From a Few More Drafts

September 15, 2018

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CREDIT: Kimberley French/Twentieth Century Fox

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Jacob Tremblay, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Yvonne Strahovski

Director: Shane Black

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for Plenty of Blood and Even More Guts, Tourette’s-Style Profanity, and Predator Sex References

Release Date: September 14, 2018

The Predators from Predator aren’t really predators. They’re sportsmen, hunting for the thrill of it instead of for sustenance. If there’s one thing that The Predator wants you to know, it’s this. And also that “The Predator” is a cool name, so it doesn’t really matter that it’s not accurate. This edition is filled with ideas, most of them more high-minded than the title character’s etymology. That is to be expected, considering that writer/director Shane Black (who acted in the 1987 original) has made his career on somewhat self-aware and slightly askew takes on the action genre. But by his standards, the ideas on display here are a little undercooked.

It turns out that some Predators may not be entirely motivated by killing. In fact, there is now at least one rogue Predator who is interested in helping earthlings survive. That is the idea driving the plot, as Army Ranger sniper Quinn (Boyd Holbrook) procures some valuable Predator tech that multiple parties are interested in retrieving. But this film’s most compelling idea is its definitive stance that spectrum disorder is the next step in human evolution. Boyd’s son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who gets his hands on his dad’s discovery, is somewhere on the spectrum. His condition is not especially debilitating; it mainly manifests itself in an aversion to loud noises and an aptitude towards accurately interpreting alien devices. He becomes a person of interest to all sides in this struggle, and it is a fairly rewarding avenue for this story to take.

But the issue is, for as much as The Predator wants to grapple with these weighty concepts, the majority of its substance consists of cheeky jokes and action set pieces, which are only sporadically satisfying. There is plenty of energy from a motley crew of military prisoners, like Keegan-Michael Key’s aficionado of “Yo momma” jokes and Thomas Jane’s Tourette’s spouter. But getting in the way of it all are inconsistent explanations about how to dispatch Predators. Do you shoot them in the head? Wear them down with multiple hits until they finally start to fall? Do you need to get their armor off? Sometimes each of those options works, but other times they don’t. Also, there are these Predator dogs that are actually kind of cute but I’m not sure what their purpose is. And that’s pretty much how this whole film goes: it’s pretty cool, but I’m not entirely sure what its purpose is.

The Predator is Recommended If You Like: The Hulk Dogs from Ang Lee’s Hulk

Grade: 2.75 out of 5 Predator-Human Hybrids

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Lizzie’ Brings the Queer Subtext to the Fore in the Latest Telling of Ms. Borden’s Ax Murders

September 10, 2018

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CREDIT: Courtesy of Saban Films and Roadside Attractions

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: Chloë Sevigny, Kristen Stewart, Jamey Sheridan, Fiona Shaw, Denis O’Hare, Kim Dickens

Director: Craig William Macneill

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: R for Brutal Deadly Violence and Practical Nudity

Release Date: September 14, 2018 (Limited)

Lizzie is in some ways a throwback to an era when queer attraction was subtextual and coded and never explicitly acknowledged. Except that this time there’s a lot more nudity, which would seem to defeat the purpose, save for the fact that this lack of clothes is not about sex but rather avoiding the evidence of blood stains. Otherwise, the structure fits, as this telling of the Lizzie Borden story plays up the angle of an affair between Lizzie and her family’s housemaid without ever uttering the word “lesbian,” instead opting for whispers and implications and the occasional “abomination.”

The real Borden was accused and ultimately acquitted of ax-murdering her father and stepmother in 1892 Massachusetts. While popular perception has treated her as the no-doubt-about-it culprit, much of the case remains officially uncertain, lending fictional retellings a lot of leeway in how they approach the material. Director Craig William Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass choose to emphasize psychological abuse from Borden’s father Andrew that gradually wore Lizzie down to murderous intent. Chloë Sevigny plays Lizzie as a perfectly dignified and intelligent individual who cannot quite handle the cognitive dissonance of her father insisting that she in fact has no place in polite society. As Andrew, Jamey Sheridan actually finds some tender notes, but his foundation of disgust is just too implacable.

Of course mention must be made of Kristen Stewart as the Bordens’ maid, Bridget Sullivan. Most of the family call her “Maggie” instead, which might be an archaic form of discrimination I was previously unfamiliar with (any turn of the 20th Century American historians, please let me know). Her bond with Lizzie is forged a great deal by the latter making it a point to actually call Bridget “Bridget.” Alas, but unsurprisingly, their time together is not meant to last, partly because of their power differential, partly because of the fallout of co-conspiracy, but mostly because society would force them to remain a secret. Yet in the end that suppressive atmosphere is a double-edged sword: it allows Lizzie to get away with murder because her peers cannot believe that someone from such a respectable family could commit such a heinous act. If they knew her true orientation, perhaps they would have come to a different conclusion. That’s a warped sort of privilege that this version of Lizzie could never fully psychically bear.

Lizzie is Recommended If You Like: Twisty/twisted/stomach-twisting feminist narratives

Grade: 3 out of 5 Axe Chops

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Nun’ is Creepy, But Not Fully Committed to the Cause

September 7, 2018

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CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons

Director: Corin Hardy

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R for Disturbing Images (but like the main Conjuring movies, it should really be PG-13)

Release Date: September 7, 2018

My favorite part of The Nun is a scene lifted wholesale from The Conjuring, not so much because The Nun is disappointing, but rather because The Conjuring is so great, and I am happy to revisit it. Alas, though, it is indeed the case that The Nun does not offer much that is on the same level as the films it has spun off from.

Every entry in The Conjuring universe thus far, including The Nun, has demonstrated superior craftsmanship, with the original Conjuring perhaps the best example in the entire horror genre this century. The two Annabelle spin-offs have fallen a little short of the two Conjuring proper entries, as the latter have been buoyed by a religious foundation that lends some decently weighty thematic resonance. The paranormal investigations of the Warrens might not be mainstream Catholicism, but they do present an interesting struggle between God and evil. The Nun would seem to be well-equipped to grapple with these same metaphysical ideas, but the fact that it takes place in a monastery feels practically beside the point.

Nevertheless, two religious figures – shown the way by their villager guide Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) – are indeed the people sent to investigate some paranormal goings-on. In this case, it’s courtesy of the demon Valak (Bonnie Aarons), who walks the Earth by blending in with his surroundings, which for our purposes means that he stalks around the monastery in a nun’s habit. Father Burke (Demián Bichir) seems like an upstanding-enough priest, but way more in over his head than he realizes. Then there is young and enthusiastic novitiate Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) – much is made of the fact that she has not taken her vows yet, which one might imagine might make her more susceptible to Valak’s or alternately to make her more pure and thus harder to corrupt. But in practice it just gives hope to the clearly smitten Frenchie that she might change her mind and not become a bride of Christ. And that is emblematic of the entirety of The Nun. It’s got the right ingredients for a horror classic – foreboding setting, creepy atmosphere, combustible character motivations – but its mind seems to be elsewhere.

The Nun is Recommended If You Like: Discovering connections between movies in the same franchise, whether or not they make sense

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Habits

This Is a Movie Review: Jennifer Garner is a Little Too Successful as a Vigilante in ‘Peppermint’

September 7, 2018

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CREDIT: Michael Muller/STXfilms

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr., Juan Pablo Raba, Annie Ilonzeh

Director: Pierre Morel

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: R for Wanton Lethal Violence

Release Date: September 7, 2018

Early on in Peppermint, Riley North (Jennifer Garner) tells her young daughter that she cannot just go around punching everyone who treats her poorly. It sounds like the sort of lesson that will undergird the whole film. But then Riley decides to completely act against her own advice. To be fair, there is a massive difference in scale at play here. Daughter is upset about a territorial dispute involving Girl Scout cookies, whereas Mom is seeking vengeance against the drug cartel that murdered her little girl and husband. As satisfying as it may be to dispatch people who have committed heinous crimes, responding in kind with violence tends to have unintended consequences and perpetuate a cycle of violence. Peppermint even acknowledges this dilemma, at least momentarily, but then opts to just ignore it.

I don’t want to condemn for Peppermint for advocating for righteous vigilante gun violence. Indeed, I think it is a mark of intellectual health to be able to enjoy explicit violence on screen while understanding it is much less frequently (if ever) justified in real life. But Peppermint makes that reckoning a little difficult by being so slavishly in thrall to its avenging angel. I genuinely worry that this film could be dangerously influential. I normally wouldn’t be so concerned, but the apparent rejection of a sound moral lesson makes this an unusual case.

Ultimately, I believe (or at least hope) that most viewers can understand that this is wish fulfillment of the highest order. Therefore, if Peppermint can establish its action bona fides, then it might actually earn a passing grade. Garner is certainly game, perhaps raring to go hard for a role like this ever since Alias ended 12 years ago. Director Pierre Morel (basically gender-flipping his most famous credit, Taken) keeps the pacing propulsive, but the overall arc is too by-the-numbers, while Riley is too invincible. It’s the kind of affair designed to get you cheering in the moment and not to get you thinking at all afterward.

Peppermint is Recommended If You Like: Death Wish, Taken, Zero consequences

Grade: 2 out of 5 Shotgun Blasts

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Little Stranger’ is Obscure Gothic Horror in an English Manor

August 30, 2018

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CREDIT: Nicola Dove/Focus Features

This review was originally posted on News Cult in August 2018.

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling, Will Poulter, Liv Hill

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Properly Disturbing Behavior

Release Date: August 31, 2018 (Moderate)

Many of the crucial events in The Little Stranger are never fully seen. A dog attacks a girl behind a curtain. The bells used to call on the housemaid ring furiously even though nobody is ringing them. And the main character, Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson), is plagued by repressed memories and his own unconscious behavior. Or at least that’s what he suspects and what the editing leads us to believe. It all begins with Faraday arriving at Hundreds Hall, a large country manor that wrings plenty of gothic horror out of its perpetual state of dreary English autumn. He is there to treat Roddy Ayres (Will Poulter), a disfigured veteran with PTSD.

The house is a bit of a totem for Faraday, as his mother worked as a maid there when he was a young boy. He is a sort of Jay Gatsby figure, coming from modest means and existing so closely to, yet so far from, the rarefied air of respectable society. Unlike Gatsby, he does not crave glamor so much as acceptance. He has never really been rejected by the type of people he treats, but he still yearns to ensure his place among them. It looks like he has fully secured it via a romance with Roddy’s sister Caroline (Ruth Wilson). But tragedy is hellbent against a happy ending coming to fruition. And what is the agent of that tragedy? Like so much of this movie, it prefers to keep itself obscure.

The Little Stranger is based on the novel of the same name by Sarah Waters, who also wrote Fingersmith, which was adapted into the 2016 Korean film The Handmaiden. Both films deal with themes of class and traffic in plot twists involving major reversals uncovered by seeing an earlier scene from a different vantage point. The major thrill of The Handmaiden is when it fully reveals its machinations for a mindblowing conclusion. The Little Stranger is much more subdued, to a fault. It asks its audience to soak in its mystery without much hope for full answers. Its craft on its way to the anticlimax is plenty chilling, but it winds up in a corner that is too dark to draw any satisfying conclusion.

The Little Stranger is Recommended If You Like: Some Dreary British Mashup of The Great Gatsby and The Handmaiden

Grade: 3 out of 5 Repressed Memories

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Searching’ Achieves Intimacy Through Screen-Based Storytelling

August 23, 2018

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CREDIT: Sebastian Baron/Screen Gems

This review was originally posted on News Cult in August 2018.

Starring: John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La, Joseph Lee

Director: Aneesh Chaganty

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Angry Outbursts and References to Patterns of Illegal Behavior

Release Date: August 24, 2018 (Limited)/Expands Nationwide August 31, 2018

If a movie is going to have a form-busting structure, it is probably best if its story works on its own merits regardless of the filmmaking style, unless the format is so unusual that audiences don’t even know how to process it. Searching is not the first film to be told entirely on computer screens, nor is it even the first from producer Timur Bekmambetov. This is just the latest in his “Screenlife” series, following in the innovative footsteps of Unfriended and its sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web. Searching is the story of widowed father David Kim (John Cho) desperately looking for his missing teenage daughter Margot (Michelle La), and it is compelling enough on its own beyond its medium-within-a-medium approach. But its unique structure proves to be an ingenious method for plumbing characters’ psychology.

Much of Searching is about David coming to terms with the fact that he may not have known his daughter as well as he thought he did. This is a phenomenon that many, perhaps all, parents experience at some point, but rarely under such tragic circumstances. Talking him through much of this crisis is Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing), the case’s lead detective, who assures David that there are always secrets between even the closest of loved ones. It’s a lesson worth keeping in mind for any viewers trying to suss out the twist to come when the truth is revealed, and it also illuminates what the Screenlife form can achieve. In one early scene, before David knows for sure that Margot is truly missing, he composes an angry text message to her … and then deletes and replaces it with something much more civil. The intimacy granted to viewers by seeing David’s process is on the same level of that between the reader and narrator of a novel.

One of Searching‘s major charms is its heavy use of outdated technology, not in terms of fetishization but rather the stasis typical of suburban parents. The opening montage features David and his wife keeping track of Margot’s early years on their new Windows XP computer. Cut to the present day, and David is still using a now decade-and-a-half-old operating system. It still runs perfectly fine, so there is no reason to be a consumerist shill and insist that he make an upgrade. But sticking to this routine is indicative of how he goes about his personal life as well. The nature of his quality time spent with Margot has not changed much since his wife died. But their relationship needs to change, because she is almost an adult and they need to talk to each other about how the loss of Mom has affected both of them. Searching does not take a stance on whether the domination of screens in modern society is a net positive or negative, but by thoroughly examining how much we document on computers, it demonstrates how valuable it is to occasionally keep track of those records.

Searching is Recommended If You Like: The Fugitive, Law & Order, Organizing Photos on Your Computer

Grade: 4 out of 5 File Folders

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Happytime Murders’ Combines Noir Mystery with Wonderfully Inventive Crude Puppet Gags

August 23, 2018

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CREDIT: Hopper Stone/STXfilms

This review was originally posted on News Cult in August 2018.

Starring: Bill Barretta, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale

Director: Brian Henson

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: R for Raucous Puppet Sex, Loopy Puppet Drug Use, Constant Puppet and Human Profanity, and a Description of an Unspeakable Act Involving Rice Pilaf

Release Date: August 24, 2018

The advertising for The Happytime Murders has made a big deal about how out of the ordinary its existence is: puppets that are usually family-friendly about to get no-holds-barred dirty to an unprecedented degree! But the movie itself, with a typical noir-style murder mystery premise, is fairly unassuming. It’s not particularly hard-bitten, just accepting of the fact that certain and lewd and violent acts are known to happen in this world. It’s as if puppet-noir were a well-established cinematic genre, as Happytime Murders does not feel the need to explain itself, at least no more so than any other movie.

It is not as if audiences should be wholly unfamiliar with what director Brian Henson and company are trying to pull off, as Happytime has a great deal in common with a certain 1988 film called Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Both feature a human and a non-human partnering up to solve a series of murders that the non-human has been framed for, in a Los Angeles in which the human population lives uneasily alongside their neighbors from another medium. Both are more adult in their storytelling than the average Disney or Muppet concoction, but while Roger Rabbit is safe for most ages, Happytime decidedly is not. And while the latter can be enjoyed simply as a story of a cynical puppet private investigator trying to clear his name, the main reason to see it is why the kids cannot come.

The jokes about the anatomy, sexual predilections, and drug habits of puppets do not have the tenor of “Look how disgusting we can be!” Instead, they are the sort of clever, fully committed gags that examine a previously unexamined premise and then take the consequences to their most absurd conclusions. The climaxes are both explosive and filled with a deep well of laser-deployed knowledge. As P.I. Phil Philips, Bill Barretta (the current performer of Muppets like Swedish Chef and Pepe) gives about as much depth as possible to a puppet character. His crackling banter with Melissa McCarthy is filled with a loopy zest that can only come from looking at an askew world and keeping a straight face. Every cast member realizes something important, and it is why Happytime works as well as it does: this is all very silly, but we must commit to everything like the joy of the world depends on it.

The Happytime Murders is Recommended If You Like: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, A femme fatale walking into a P.I. office, The Muppets, Spy, The Heat

Grade: 3.75 out of 5 Puppet Carpets Matching the Drapes

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Support the Girls’ is a Low-Key Look at the Ins and Outs of a Curvy Family Sports Bar

August 21, 2018

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CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in August 2018.

Starring: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, James Le Gros, Junglepussy, Dylan Gelula, Lea DeLaria, AJ Michalka

Director: Andrew Bujalski

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: R for a Nipple That’s Visible for a Fraction of a Second

Release Date: August 24, 2018 (Limited)

A wayward day at work, especially if you have a job in the service industry, has a way of making time feel distorted. And if you’re working at a Hooters-style “family” restaurant, you also have to contend with the distortion of typically agreed-upon social mores. So it is for Double Whammies general manager Lisa Conroy (Regina Hall), who finds herself at the nexus of so many little disasters over one day. Every shift at Double Whammies is a potential disaster, so it is no surprise that an early scene features Lisa explaining her zero tolerance policy towards “grabbers.” On top of that ever-present risk, this day is just a circus. A bunch of potential new waitresses are recruited for an extracurricular car wash, somebody is stuck in the vents, and the cable is threatening to be out during a big boxing match.

Support the Girls has the look and feel of a shaggy dramedy, capturing the minutiae of suburban service employment without directly commenting upon it. But it turns out that there is a tighter focus to writer/director Andrew Bujalski’s approach than he at first lets on, as Lisa is closer to the end of her rope than we initially realize. An alternate title could have been We Caught Her on a Good Day and a Bad Day. There’s a weird mix of committed and easygoing at play here. Hall is steely enough to make Lisa’s journey compelling, but I’m more interested in probing the psyche of Maci (Haley Lu Richardson), her most enthusiastic waitress. Maci is the type of person who suddenly pops out of a door to shoot confetti and declare, “You’re the best and we love ya!” She is a burst of consistent positive energy, which in this environment is alarming but never less than genuine. How do the Maci’s of the world stay on all the time? Are they role models for us all? Or maybe ideal best friends? Or perhaps cautionary tales struggling with demons they never show us?

Support the Girls is Recommended If You Like: Anything with Regina Hall or Haley Lu Richardson

Grade: 3 out of 5 Crop Tops

This Is a Movie Review: The Meg

August 19, 2018

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

The Meg‘s reported production budget is at least $130 million, but it sure does not look like it. Oh, it’s certainly professionally made, but you can see it cutting corners in a manner typical of cheapie SyFy creature features. Characters sit around in a submersibles and wait for something to happen, the settings are often confined locations, and the big set piece with a bunch of extras is a little light on mayhem. But while all those dollars may not be visible, The Meg does have enough of a sheen that justifies projecting it on the big screen. Ultimately, it’s disposable, but eminently watchable. Jason Statham spears a giant shark in the eye, Rainn Wilson provides the comic relief (and gets his comeuppance, even though I don’t think he really deserves any comeuppance), everyone on the boats seem like to each other, and they shout crazy exclamations when they’re in imminent danger. Also, there’s a Thai cover of Toni Basil’s “Mickey.”

I give The Meg 15 Chomps out of 25 Overboard.

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