‘Hell of a Summer’ is a Low-Key Doodle of a Slasher

April 3, 2025

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What the hell (of a summer)?! (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard, Pardis Saremi, Krista Nazaire, Matthew Finlan, Julia LaLonde, Daniel Gravelle, Julia Doyle, Rosebud Baker, Adam Pally

Directors: Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk

Running Time: 88 Minutes

Rating: R for Bloody Shenanigans and a Conversation About Getting Busy During a Movie

Release Date: April 4, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Veteran Pineway Camp counselor Jason (Fred Hechinger) had an embarrassingly tearful goodbye at the end of last summer, which he thought was going to be his last at Pineway. And it probably should have been. He is aging out of the gig, after all, and it doesn’t exactly pay like a full-time job. But the owners needed the extra help this year, or at least that’s what he keeps saying. But he really should’ve reconsidered, considering that … there’s a serial killer on the loose! Will Jason turn hero and save all his fellow counselors, or will everyone just die sad, unremarkably gruesome deaths?

What Made an Impression?: Two-for-One Deal: Hell of a Summer is written and directed by a pair of youngsters (Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, who both also star), but despite their youth, they’ve assembled a throwback to the slashers of yore, particularly two that loom menacingly large over the rest of the genre. You’ve got the camp setting and ugly relentlessness of Friday the 13th, but with a little bit more personality than Jason Voorhees’ adventures. That’s crossed with the Scream-style setup of friends playing detective against each other, except that in this case most of them are a little dopier and a lot more superficial than Woodsboro’s residents. They’re not so infuriating that you’re begging for them to get sliced up, but you might just want them to go through some terrible trauma so that they’ll actually grow up.
Where is Everyone?: There’s one big unanswered question throughout Hell of a Summer: where are all the kids?! Or is this just an “Oops All Counselors” type of amp? Now, of course, the most likely answer is that the young attendees are scheduled to arrive at least one day after all the counselors, so they’re not supposed to be there at this point anyway. But the counselors never seem to behave as if anyone else is on the way! To be fair, that isn’t exactly unbelievable behavior from teenagers and young twentysomethings, but I nevertheless couldn’t help but be deeply affected by the lack of explanatory context.

Hell of a Summer is Recommended If You: Wish that Wet Hot American Summer had fewer laughs and more blood

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Decapitations

‘Nickel Boys’ Lets You in on the Action

December 12, 2024

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If I had a Nickel for every Boy… (CREDIT: Courtesy of Orion Pictures)
© 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs

Director: RaMell Ross

Running Time: 140 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Racism and Authoritarianism

Release Date: December 13, 2024 (New York Theaters)/December 20, 2024 (Los Angeles Theaters)

What’s It About?: Young Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) has a promising future ahead of him in 1962 Florida. He’s excited about heading off to college, but then an unfortunate encounter leads to a false accusation and a stint at the brutal reform school Nickel Academy, where he befriends a fellow student/inmate named Turner (Brandon Wilson). Elwood seems more or less confident that he’ll be able to leave eventually, although the truth soon hits him hard as he realizes that he’ll need to be particularly crafty if he wants to return to a life of freedom anytime soon. Meanwhile, the much more hardened Turner has come to accept that the only way to escape before “graduating” is in a body bag. And as bad as all that sounds, occasional flashes to the future reveal that even darker practices are afoot at this institution.

What Made an Impression?: The Power and Limits of POV: If you’re a scholar of filmmaking techniques, you’ll notice something right away that makes Nickel Boys unique. On the other hand, if you’re a complete novice regarding the language of film, you still might notice something, even if you don’t quite have the vocabulary for it. That’s because director/co-writer RaMell Ross and his cinematographer Jomo Fray decided to shoot this whole dang thing from a first-person point of view, as if the camera were strapped to the heads of a couple of the main characters. We mostly follow Elwood’s perspective, but about halfway through, it alternates between his and Turner’s POV. I found this approach more interesting than mesmerizing, although I have noticed that plenty of my colleagues were much more blown away. While it didn’t work on me as well as it could have, it’s definitely not ostentatious; Nickel Boys is essentially about the reconstruction of traumatic memories, so it makes sense to strictly limit the available information in this fashion.
Digging Up the Dirt: So is there any chance that Elwood and/or Turner make it out of Nickel alive? Feel free to skip this paragraph if you want to go in having absolutely no idea, but if you don’t mind being teased a bit more, I will say that the glimpses of what happens decades later are both seamless and tantalizingly detached. They’re focused on a surreptitious investigation into Nickel that has the “trust no one” vibe of classic X-Files. There aren’t any aliens of cryptids, but there’s enough institutional malfeasance to make it feel unnervingly supernatural. The ideas at play in this movie won’t come as a surprise to anyone whose eyes are open, but chances are it will still leave you with a feeling you won’t be able to shake.

Nickel Boys is Recommended If You Like: Big Formal Swings

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Points of View

‘Gladiator II’ Review: Come for the Son of Maximus, Stay for the Animals and the Denzel

November 19, 2024

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The Gladiator and the Scene-Stealer (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures)

Starring: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Connie Nielsen, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi

Director: Ridley Scott

Running Time: 148 Minutes

Rating: R for Warriors and Beasts Ripping Each Other Apart

Release Date: November 22, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Maybe one day there will be a time when all men will be free in Rome, but today is not that day. Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal) is just trying to live a relatively carefree life with his wife, but then the Roman army shows up. He makes a valiant attempt to defend his city, but instead he’s captured and forced into slavery. Perhaps that was always going to be his inescapable fate all along, considering that he’s the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius, the titular gladiator from the first Gladiator. He ends up in the hands of Macrinus (Denzel Washington) and becomes Rome’s new favorite plaything after displaying his prodigious combat skills. There might also be a reconciliation with his mother (Connie Nielsen) along the way, or perhaps he will just make a series of cynical philosophical declarations in between his stints in the arena.

What Made an Impression?: They Are Not Animals… But What If They Were?: There are a lot of characters to keep track of in Gladiator II. Maybe if you think about Ancient Rome all the time and/or you re-watch the first Gladiator every single day, it might be easy for you to keep up. But for someone like myself whose interest in this setting is much more casual, I can’t pretend that I was able to keep track of all the details. But what did leave an indelible impression were the beasts: specifically the pack of baboons let loose upon the gladiators. They are surely CGI creations, but I felt them as viscerally as any practical effect. And I guess I wasn’t terribly familiar with what exactly baboons look like, or at least not feral ones, because these particular baboons struck me as rather canine in nature. Did the Island of Dr. Moreau wander into Rome for a minute? If so, it was a welcome addition.
Chewing the Colosseum: I just spent the last paragraph making it sound like I didn’t care for any of the human actors, but there are actually a few exceptions. As co-emperor brothers Geta and Caracalla, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger provide the requisite depravity. But the major highlight is unsurprisingly the indefatigable Denzel Washington. It shouldn’t come as any surprise at this point in his career that he’s able to deliver a scene-stealing performance. And I’m not surprised. But what he’s doing here is no less impressive for how expected it is. Every line reading and every simple gesture is oozing finely calibrated personality. He’s the MC guiding us through this barbarism, making it clear how anyone and everyone could ever be seduced by a world that only speaks in violence.

Gladiator II is Recommended If You Like: Laughing at all the violence because that’s the only way to feel

Grade: 3 out of 5 Sandals

Meeting Up with ‘Thelma’ and Landing on ‘Janet Planet’

July 2, 2024

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Thelma Being Thelma (CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures)

Thelma

Starring: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell, Nicole Byer, Coral Peña

Director: Josh Margolin

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)

Janet Planet

Starring: Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Sophie Okonedo, Will Patton

Director: Annie Baker

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)

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