On this week’s Screening Room, Hope & George review Supergirl, Jackass: Best and Last, Lucky Strike, Couture, Camp & The Voices of our Mother.
Dressed to Impress
Couture
by Hope Madden
Fashion Week in Paris—the only word in that phrase I entirely understand is “in”. Well, I know what a week is, but in Alice Winocour’s drama Couture, Angelina Jolie plays Maxine, an indie horror director with zero interest in fashion who’s tasked with creating a short film to introduce the diva hullabaloo.
They probably called it something different that I should know, but at least there was a character I could grasp.
Maxine is out of her element, under pressure from the event organizers, struggling to communicate with her Stateside 15-year-old, and told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist immediately.
Meanwhile, Ada (Anyler Anei) is this year’s “new face.” She’ll star in Maxine’s short film and be the first model on the runway. But she’s never modeled before. She’s an 18-year-old South Sudanese refugee living in Kenya and studying pharmacy. Like Maxine, Ada is in over her head.
Winocour, who writes as well as directs, braids these two stories with a third strand. Ella Rumpf is a make-up artist and observer, someone who runs almost undetected in all the Fashion Week circles.
What the three tales have in common, what Winocour explores without exploring, is what each woman keeps to herself. Choosing Fashion Week for this exploration seems fitting. Models are stand-ins, lovely images to hang an idea or a frock on, but not humans. No emotions, no turmoil, no war-torn country to preoccupy them. At least, that’s the role the industry requires them to perform.
Jolie’s gently understated stoicism offers the film an emotional center while Anei’s sweetly awkward vulnerability keeps it tender. Although Winocour’s transitions from one tale to the next are almost magical in their grace, the third storyline with Rumpf feels underdeveloped and a little heavy handed.
Wincour can’t bring the story full circle. The fashion industry still seems superficial and unnecessary by film’s end, which leaves the film feeling less powerful than what the individual heroines deserve.
Fight the Pain Away
Supergirl
by George Wolf
Look, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) isn’t some goody-goody like her cousin Superman, okay? She’s a hard partying rock chick rockin’ a Blondie t-shirt and a wiseass attitude on her 23rd birthday, so F-you! She’s not about go and join young Ruthye’s (Eve Ridley) quest to avenge her parents’ death at the cold-blooded hands of space villain Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts).
But then Krem shoots Krypto full of a slow-acting poison, and suddenly Kara’s got 72 hours to find Krem, get the antidote, and save her beloved dog from back home.
There’s also a sex trafficking ring to bust up, so add Fury Road to John Wick, Star Wars, Alien, multiple Westerns and various other inspirations you may spot. And while at this point, finding an entirely original stylistic angle for your superhero film may be damn near impossible, this familiarity is one of the things keeping a pretty satisfying adventure from reaching the stratosphere.
Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl, The Finest Hours) overcomes some occasionally wonky CGI to craft several winning sequences of action, backstory and world building, but often undercuts the growing momentum by bailing out too soon. The surprising dive into the demise of Krypton adds narrative heft, but dropping it between the grimness of The Dark Knight and the giddy excess of Birds of Prey keeps any distinct tone elusive.
Through all of it, Alcock (House of the Dragon) keeps our titular hero wonderfully grounded. Writer Ana Nogueira’s debut screenplay may be filled with familiar themes of grief, destiny, revenge and female rage, but Kara has specific reasons to be wounded. Alcock makes sure we appreciate the character arc that turns Kara’s defense mechanisms into Supergirl’s defense of truth, justice, and…you know.
Alcock finds a way to make us care about the girl, whether hunting down Krem (Schoenaerts is a wonderful, facially-studded psycho), fighting alongside Lobo (Jason Mamoa, gleefully hamming it up) or feeling sweetly big sisterly to the resourceful Ruthye.
And more importantly, Alcock’s scenes with David Corenswet’s Superman cement the film’s biggest win: giving Kara the agency for her hero to stand as more than just a sidekick. This girl’s truth is separate from her famous cousin. Supergirl makes no apologies for making that clear, with an uneven but ultimately effective introduction.
I Can’t Live Without My Radio
Lucky Strike
by George Wolf
The song that plays over the closing credits of Lucky Strike couldn’t be a more appropriate choice. Co-written by Rod Lurie, who also co-wrote and co-directed the movie, the theme is passionate and well meaning. It is also overwrought and heavy handed.
So again, perfect for this film.
By all accounts, Lurie (The Outpost), co-director Todor Kotzev, co-writer Marc Frydman and their fellow producers have gone to great lengths to ensure this film gets the thumbs up from WWII historians. From the jeeps to the artillery, the terrain and beyond, the clear aim of the production was to create an authentic bridge between recorded history and battlefield reality.
And on the note, Lucky Strike hits the mark. An authentic feel for the characters being developed proves a much harder target.
Scott Eastwood takes the lead as Capt. John Castle, who in December 1944 is ordered by his superior (Colin Hanks in a brief cameo) to oversee the blockade of a road in the Ardennes forest often used by German soldiers.
Castle and his team come under heavy fire, eventually leaving John and his invaluable radio “Lassie” – which will become even more valued later on – alone behind enemy lines.
Based on true events from the legendary Battle of the Bulge, the film becomes one man’s journey of commitment and survival, as Castle sets out on the 30km trek to safety in Elsenborn, Belgium.
As correct as all the details may be, the writing and direction never miss the opportunity to overplay a hand. Despite some tense and well orchestrated one-shot action sequences, much of the dialog lacks nuance, the editing and reaction shots continually aim for the back row, a third act twist isn’t hard to see coming, and there’s even the inclusion of an actual pale horse (apparently ridden by subtlety).
Eastwood shoulders a big load but doesn’t show the family gift of understatement, and cannot elevate any of this material. Only the great Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as a grieving mother in some touching bookend scenes with Eastwood, can give the film a fleeting layer of humanity.
Lucky Strike needed more of that. There’s plenty to respect here on a technical and historical level, but any true emotional connection is lost in the wilderness.
Coven in the Woods
Camp
by Hope Madden
A sapphic coming-of-age summer camp horror, those words are not untrue. They are inaccurate. Whatever expectations you may have coming into writer/director Avalon Fast’s Camp, they’re wrong. Which is not necessarily bad.
Prizing atmosphere over genre, Fast’s loose narrative and structure benefit the floating grief that keeps Emily (Zola Grimmer) only partly present in any situation. It’s rooted in an adolescent tragedy and exacerbated by an incident in her early twenties. She’s disconnected, vacant, and her concerned father suggests she take a counselor position at a summer camp for troubled kids.
But Fast clarifies from Camp’s opening sequence that this is not going to be a slasher. Even when Emily falls in with a close-knit group of likewise disaffected young women—her own coven, if you will—the filmmaker shrugs off any comfortable comparison. The Craft? Practical Magic?
No, grief, guilt, shame, and the disconcertingly untethered existence of modern young adulthood don’t fit so neatly into a single box. Fast wanderingly explores ideas connected with nature and female camaraderie, with acceptance and rejection, with the search for peace. But a typical witch film this is not.
In a little attic space above a cabin in a Christian Youth Camp, five damaged young women cling to each other. They bond, drink, hallucinate, cast spells, make sacrifices, and feel comfort. But unlike The Craft, which condemned a dark use of the feminine power of nature, Camp is nonjudgmental.
Instead, Fast is interested in these broken young women and their hazy search for something to make them feel whole. The pace is slow, the imagery hypnotic, occasionally surreal. The film aches. It mourns. It embraces a vivid if ill-defined reality in which there is no clear path to happiness or wholeness.
Self-discovery is the key, and Emily’s is all melancholy magic. Cinematographer Eily Sprugman captures Emily’s heady freedom and earthy nightmare with gorgeous color. Fast’s languid pace, though sometimes tiresome, mainly delivers a groggy magic that feels like a dark dream.
Grimmer’s naturalistic performance grounds the wonder with honesty and heartbreak. There’s a real sadness at the heart of Camp that, along with an intriguingly messy morality, will keep you thinking about it long after it’s over.
Fright Club: Parenting Disasters in Horror
There are loads of bad parents in horror. Jack Torrence is no doll. Margaret White’s a bit much. In bad parent horror, we empathize with the offspring. But there’s something perhaps more unsettling when you empathize with the parents who are genuinely trying but something—sometimes just one bad decision—ends in unspeakable disaster. It’s those dumbasses that we salute today!
And thanks again to FeedSpot for including us on their latest list of Best Horror Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/midwest_horror_podcasts/
5. Splice (2009)
This creature feature Frankenstein mad science mash up goes places you may not expect. Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) investigates science as commerce, the maternal instinct or lack thereof, sexual politics, nature and nurture and more in this body horror.
The wtf! of it all works because of the undeniable talent of its leads, Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody. What they’re doing in this is hard to know, but they elevate a B-horror script to something weirdly compelling. Polley’s big eyed, emotionless performance offers a fascinating conundrum that makes every wild turn make sense. Sort of.
4. Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier’s foray into horror follows a couple down a deep and dark rabbit hole of grief. Von Trier’s films have often fixated on punishing viewers and female protagonists alike, but in this film the nameless woman (played fearlessly by Charlotte Gainsbourg) wields most of the punishment – whether upon her mate (Willem Dafoe) or herself.
Consumed by grief, a mother allows her husband—also grieving—to become her psychotherapist as they retreat to their isolated cabin deep in the woods where they will try to overcome the horror of losing their only child.
They won’t succeed.
3. Speak No Evil (2022)
Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, a terribly polite tale of Danes and Dutchmen that veers slowly but relentlessly toward something sinister. Speak No Evil quickly becomes a sociological experiment that questions our tendency to act against our own instincts, side with the cool kids, and lose who we are.
Tafdrup’s script, co-written with Mads Tafdrup, is sneaky in the way it treads on social anxiety, etiquette, politeness. You see how easily gaslighting alters the trajectory of a conversation, the course of action. Speak No Evil is a grim trip, but there is no question that it’s well made.
2. Mother! (2017)
Between writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s disorienting camera and his cast’s impeccable performances, he ratchets up tension in a way that is beyond uncomfortable. This is all clearly leading somewhere very wrong and the film develops the atmosphere of a nightmare quickly, descending further and further with each scene.
Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer are indescribably brilliant. Like most of the filmmaker’s work, mother! will not be for everyone. But if you’re up for an allegorical descent into hell, meticulously crafted and deftly told, and if you like your metaphors heavy and your climaxes absurd, this mother! is for you.
1. Coffee Table (2022)
On Shudder, Prime, Tubi, AMC+
A remarkably well written script fleshed out by a stunning ensemble becomes utter torture as you want so badly for some other outcome. Co-writer/director Caye Casas ties threads, builds anxiety, plunges the depths of “what’s the worst that could happen?” and leaves you shaken.
David Pareja and Estefania de los Santos craft indelible, believable, beautifully flawed characters so convincing that their experience becomes painful for you. Casas salts the wounds with dark comedy, but the tenderness and tragedy collaborate toward something far more crushingly human.
Screening Room: Disclosure Day, Earth Wind & Fire, Leviticus
Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Disclosure Day, The Furious, Earth Wind & Fire, Find Your Friends, and Leviticus.
Running to Stand Still
Find Your Friends
by Hope Madden
I love Shudder. Truth is, Shudder is the only station I know how to find on our TV. I mean it. How I look forward to each new Shudder original! Happily, most of them live up to the excitement.
But every once in a while, you get a Find Your Friends.
Five unreasonably attractive and clearly alcoholic twentysomething besties wreak havoc on their livers and look good doing it. And screw the a’holes at this yacht party because these party bitches are headed to Joshua Tree to a better party followed by some desert tripping. Hell yeah!
I rarely stop watching a movie once I start it because it’s my job to finish the movie. I had to remind myself of this during Find Your Friends no fewer than four times before we even got to Joshua Tree.
We spend time with Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) twerking, doing shots, slapping each other’s asses, taking Molly, smoking joints, taking ‘shrooms, more shots, making out with strangers, driving wasted, saying “pussy” hundreds of times, talking incessantly about dick, and living as if we don’t exist in a country where you get away with rape but go to prison for defending yourself.
But that’s sort of writer/director Izabel Pakzad’s point, I suppose. That humans aggressively oblivious to their own safety still deserve safety, which is true. And that young women are often so frequently coerced and misused that they bond over it, joke about it, numb themselves to it. Also valid.
And that no women live in Joshua Tree at all. Only pick-up truck driving rapists and rifle carrying misogynists. This seems less accurate.
The heavy handedness of the film’s story and the one-dimensionality of its characters make it hard for Pakzad to build any momentum. There really is a story of female rage swimming beneath the sea of alcohol, but the story is so slight and the film so long and the climax so abrupt and the final shot so unearned that the message is tough to get behind.
Mighty Mighty Joy
Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World
by George Wolf
Don’t worry, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson doesn’t let the surviving members of Earth, Wind & Fire sidestep the tough questions.
What is the meaning of “ba-dee-ya,” anyway?
But well before Thompson gets to that, his HBO streamer Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World becomes an exhilarating celebration of a band making music so joyful it’s described as “Jesus-less gospel.”
Through archival footage, performance clips, family mementos and interviews new and old, we see the band’s visionary founder Maurice White persevere through early struggles to embrace a unique sound that propelled EWF’s journey as 70s superstars, 80s has-beens and eventual worldwide icons.
Director Thompson, already an Oscar winner for the triumphant Summer of Soul, again shows impeccable instincts for presenting a music doc that transcends any Behind the Music formula. Of course, being an accomplished music himself can’t hurt, and Thompson’s effervescent approach lets the stories and songs find a seamless blend of style and meaning.
And somehow, the film manages to smooth over the massive absence of White, who passed away in 2016 from Parkinson’s disease. Heartfelt remembrances from band members, family, partners, friends and admirers (including Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, and Barack and Michelle Obama) paint an effective portrait of a gifted but complex artist who rose above childhood trauma for professional success full of singalong affirmations that often masked a personal struggle.
Those who may not know much about White will get schooled plenty, and even longtime fans like myself (hey, my birthday just happens to be the 21st night of September) may find a few surprises here (like why Philip Bailey would apologize for his classic slow jam “Reasons”). What everyone will find with Earth, Wind & Fire is two solid hours of EWF magic, and an inescapable joy both celestial and weighty.
Stop and Be Friendly
Disclosure Day
by Hope Madden
For about fifty years, Steven Spielberg has been indulging his wonder. By sheer force of will and undeniable talent, the filmmaker turned the direction of Hollywood’s alien fascination, not from “they’re coming to get us” to “maybe they love us.” But he pushed hard enough, beguiled intensely enough, to create that space.
He isn’t done. Disclosure Day returns our eyes to the skies and asks us to examine why our natural inclination is to believe the worst in each other and blame the “other” for it.
Josh O’Connor is Daniel Kellner, math nerd (you knew there’d be a nerd). He’s employed by Wardex, an intelligence and security paramilitary firm that works alongside, not for, the US government. But Spielberg, working from a script by longtime collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds) for which he gets story credit, wastes no time on this set up. From the opening smackdown, we are on the run with Daniel and girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) from Wardex and its head, Scanlon (Colin Firth).
Cut to the charmingly unserious Kansas City meteorologist, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt). Quite suddenly, over the objections of Margaret’s equally unserious boyfriend (Wyatt Russell), she’s on a collision course with Daniel while Scanlon’s high tech, black clad operatives use all intel on hand to close in.
The shot making is Spielberg at his most reflectively, thrillingly Spielbergian. Disorienting, gorgeous, and often recalling his own work in nod after ingenious nod. Plus, John Williams came out of retirement, pairing music to scene to reliably engrossing effect.
Colman Domingo offers his support as the father figure whose let wonder and optimism override knee jerk fear and cynicism.
Everybody’s great, Blunt in particular. And there’s a lovely sentiment fueling the tale as Spielberg uses his familiar themes to point to the weaponization of religion and society’s bottomed-out belief in humanity.
But the world is not the same place it was when Richard Dreyfuss wasted a good plate of mashed potatoes. As well made and engaging as Disclosure Day is, the third act reveals what the first two suggested. For a comment on the state of the world, or an extra-terrestrial thriller, the film’s sweet, quaint, and somewhat irrelevant.
A few questionable details would be easier to overlook thanks to the film’s admirable momentum had it all led somewhere less telegraphed and less wide-eyed.
