Hypnotic (2023)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Well, it certainly isn't hypnotic in the real sense of the word. In Hypnotic, the concept is in fact a noun, one that designates someone who can instantaneously hypnotize people and effectively control their minds. The film vaguely suggests that, once trained by a shadowy government agency called "the Division," these individuals can force suggestibility on nearly anyone -- and usually everyone nearby -- with a single stare, a flash of a watch or ring, and get them to do or think anything. One woman becomes instantly convinced she's melting from heat and starts stripping on the street; cops instantly forget who and what they serve; a devoted client of a fortune teller drives his motorcycle through the front of her shop. And why is all this happening?

Your guess is as good as mine. Writer and director Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) has here created a rare complete flop, at least for this viewer, and I don't particularly like his movies anyway. This hazy attempt at a science fiction thriller feels like Rodriguez was playing his best imitation of Christopher Nolan and failing miserably. It's a bizarre, Western-dressed neo-noir heist caper that seems loosely inspired by Inception and The Prestige. It's one of those annoying movies in which too many mysteries are set up early on, most are solved stupidly halfway through, and then it recreates itself with more mysteries, all of which are neatly tied up by a self-obsessed all-encompassing revelation in the climax that feels both contrived to a fault and totally unbelievable.

Ben Affleck delivers a typically reliable performance, though it's clear he has little real interest in the material or his own character, as a Texas detective who can't escape the memories of his seven-ear-old daughter who was abducted under his watch some time ago and whose kidnapping led to his divorce and suicidal depression. This film starts with him (the character names did not stick with me and frankly don't matter) being called to a bank heist masterminded by a creepy older man played by William Fichtner, who we later learn is one of these "hypnotics" after Affleck notices his weird behaviors at the crime scene and the unaccountable, violent tendencies of nearly everyone he speaks with. By the end of the sequence, Affleck has a photo of his daughter, a strange note with a clue, and a lot of questions in his shaken memory.

Filmed in wide shots that use lots of lens tricks to warp our own perception, Rodriguez (who also aided with cinematography) really wants us to feel immersed in what he thinks is a mind-bending mystery of altered reality. It is none of these things, and I found myself often getting irritated by his clear string-pulling attempts to influence the audience rather than just focusing on the messy plot or obnoxiously obtuse characters. The plot twists -- which happen every twenty minutes or so -- are both unrelenting and obvious; the dialogue is so exposition-heavy and emotionally bankrupt, I think I'd rather read a synopsis than hear it. Even Alice Braga can't save the film from its own stupidity as a "dime store psychic" who turns out to be (SPOILER ALERT) his ex-wife and mother of his abducted child. And, wait, did I mention that they are both also hypnotics who have had their memories wiped so that The Division (asinine sci-fi verbiage like this is exactly why I always have misgivings about the genre) can locate and take their daughter for themselves, because the daughter of two hypnotics is apparently a powerful asset.

Sure, if you like Rodriguez and his weird fetishizing of white-ish American Southwest culture, there are some moments you might dig in this movie. I personally found the sheer amount of heavy black leather both enticing and laughable, as the whole film is set in sun-bleached, dusty Austin and its environs. The couple of times special effects are employed, namely during chase scenes as the road ahead appears to bend up and curl over the sky (a la Inception or Doctor Strange), it's so cheap looking that I had to double check who directed and what studio produced, because it's uglier than any effects widely released in cinemas these days. Apart from one single scene featuring Jackie Earle Haley, which is admittedly effective and effectively haunting, Hypnotic was a colossal waste of resources and talents for the filmmakers and a woeful waste of time for this viewer.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Regretfully having never read Judy Blume's landmark source material, I went into this movie having no idea what to expect. My sole reasons were its casting -- and, admittedly, a curiosity about the title, the hype around which I never heard more than people praising it vaguely -- and so its story and ideas took me completely by surprise. And, really, maybe that was the best way to experience it. So if you know nothing or very little about Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, I'd recommend you stop reading after this paragraph. Its early scenes piqued my interest, and before long I was laughing and weeping aloud in the crowded cinema alongside others of all ages doing pretty much the same thing. This is the kind of communal family drama that I'd recommend to everyone everywhere, especially for group viewings.

In case you don't know or need a refresher, the story is essentially a bildungsroman for young Margaret Simon, living in New Jersey in the 1970s. She has not been raised within any organized religion, having interfaith parents; her Jewish father and Christian mother want her to determine her own religious identity when she's older (at the start of the film, she's eleven, if my notes are to be trusted). Things reach a dramatic climax when her grandparents -- her emotionally and socially intimate Jewish paternal grandmother Sylvia as well as her estranged Christian maternal grandparents from the Midwest -- all arrive for spring break and clash catastrophically, each attempting to inculcate their religious practices. But Margaret isn't only beset by matters of faith, family, and culture: she's also a middle school girl suddenly transplanted from New York City to suburban New Jersey, navigating friendships and flirtations with peers whose bodies and hormones are changing by the day. She learns in rapid succession about everything from periods to bras, and wishes more than anything that she'd "grow up" as quickly as some of her classmates.

It's a beautiful story, rich in both complexity and nostalgia, frank but delicate in its forthright attention to the subject matter. Even in our jaded age, it says a lot about the source material and the filmmakers that not a single scene feels uncomfortable or out of place (to clarify, there are indeed some uncomfortable encounters in the plot, but even the difficult scenarios are handled with grace, understanding, and even some levity by the filmmakers). We never once doubt the sincerity of these characters, and that's incredibly rare these days, even in family-friendly comedies. That has a lot to do with Blume, surely, but here I'll praise writer and director Kelly Fremon Craig for her endlessly insightful and accessible work. I suspect, but admittedly don't know, that Craig's adaptation includes new material in her scenes dramatizing the inner life of Margaret's mother Barbara (played by a magnificent Rachel McAdams). Her character was the one I absolutely did not expect to take such a central role, and I was tearfully glad to be wrong.

Although the film is set in 1970 or so -- and its production design, costumes, and acting are all gobsmackingly pitch-perfect -- it spoke to me in surprising ways and made me feel nostalgic for my own childhood in the '90s. The neighborhood Margaret's family moves to is not dissimilar from where I grew up in western Michigan, and I remember a lot of similar conversations with friends (though naturally fewer talk of periods and bra sizes with my friend group of boys) on warm spring days of running through lawn sprinklers. We, too, had our not-quite-secret clubs and hideouts, learning tough lessons of honesty, trust, peer pressure, curiosity and its cost, and personal authenticity. Early on, Margaret meets her new friend's brother's friend, a neighborhood boy and hardworking lawn-mower nicknamed Moose, who has started growing hair under his arms; the camera shifts suddenly to Margaret's perspective as she notices it and realizes he's maturing in ways that are exciting to her rather than annoying. That seems a fairly universal moment of realization, and this film puts us right back in that mental state; we know her crush on Moose will take probably the whole film for her to process and accept, and indeed it does.

There are countless moments like this that combine earnestness with good-natured humor -- the girls attempting to exercise to grow breasts while chanting "I must, I must, I must increase my bust" is a pure delight -- that never once makes fun of the kids. It showcases how silly and cruel kids can be in their most raw and honest interactions, but never treats them exploitatively. It's a tightrope of tone, one that Craig handles with what would seem to be veteran mastery, though this is only her sophomore directorial work. Similarly, even when Margaret's parents or the other adults around her act in, shall we say, nearsighted ways, it's not out of malice or neglect so much as another form of earnestness, one that speaks to our understanding that these characters are all just trying to learn, do right, and be well in harmony with each other. It's an overwhelmingly refreshing view of adulthood and humanity that I did not expect and haven't seen on screen in some time.

Rachel McAdams, as I said, is magnificent in this film. Benny Safdie capably plays her husband, Herb, but the movie belongs solely to McAdams and the utterly brilliant titular protagonist, played by Abby Ryder Forston, who deserves awards for this performance. I've said Forston is one of the best working child actors since I first saw her in 2014 (Transparent, The Whispers, and of course the first two Ant-Man films), and she is absolutely making a big name for herself as a young woman now. Yet for all this, I was most surprised and delighted by the presence of Kathy Bates in this film as Herb's mother Sylvia. Bates's always reliable and reliably brilliant talents are here heightened to full scene-chewing panache in a character almost tailored to her skill set, though of course she clearly works hard for spontaneity and vivacity in every moment.

With an unexpectedly sharp focus on the three generations of women (paternal grandmother, mother, and daughter), a curious theme emerges that doesn't fit the mold of bildungsroman but informs it in fascinating ways: that of how one's parenting behaviors affect the development and identity of their children. I suppose we saw some similar things in Boyhood, too, though that narrative was worlds away from this. Barbara is just as much a fish out of water as Margaret, dramatized handily in scenes that depict her giving up her art teaching career to become a suburban housewife and school mom run ragged by the PTA. There's some of this, too, with Sylvia (who I think is widowed, but could also be divorced or a staunch Auntie Mame type woman, I'm not sure if the film tells us) clearly devastated when her son and granddaughter move out of the city. Their relationship certainly isn't that of a helicopter or have any shades of codependency, but she struggles with her purpose and aim without her family nearby, and that's something all three women will need to navigate moving forward.

It's an amazing film altogether, full stop. I found myself wondering often what might happen if we had slightly more access to the characters' internal lives, specifically their opinions about each other. Their mutual love is palpable, certainly, and the actors clearly have lots of strong reactions and feelings about various events, but I'd have liked just a bit more open dialogue between them at crucial moments, such as when Margaret's best friend gets her first period and her mother reacts stiffly and awkwardly, or how Margaret must feel about Barbara's attempted reconciliation with her apparently anti-Semitic parents. Then again, these brief but significant moments of mystery will be the things that keep me coming back to this film in thought and during re-watches, so maybe they're important as they are.

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Score: 5 / 5

Some of the best film scholarship and criticism of 2023 will be written about Beau is Afraid, so I'm going to take a backseat for now and just relay some of my rabbit-trail thoughts about it. Because it's magnificent, and I'll need to see it at least once or twice more to develop a better relationship with it, although frankly just once was enough to fill my soul and bother my mind for several weeks.

Much as his co-artists in what I'm calling the triumvirate of horror auteurs (Jordan Peele and Robert Eggers), Ari Aster has already created two major titles: one, a razor-sharp and sickly specific breakout horror gem, and the second, an expansive and daring assault on both senses and sensibilities. This is true for all three, and the other two have since released a third film each, which while horrific in their own ways, also branch out to include other genres, science fiction and historical war/fantasy respectively. Aster now follows suit with his own break-out-of-the-mold horror comedy and psychological "trauma drama." At least, that's what I'm going to call Beau is Afraid, because its three hour runtime spans the gamut of topics and ideas, most relating to self identity and perception, family relationships, and the psychological damage that comes from and informs each.

It might be fair to say that Beau, the titular character played magnificently by Joaquin Phoenix, is afraid of everything. He seems afraid of living, as his apartment in squalor suggests; the literally sparking elevator made me shriek with each appearance. His demeanor is one of perpetually making himself smaller, stooping his shoulders and tightening his mouth and brow, pulling back his voice into a childlike whimper. He's afraid of everyone outside, who Aster dramatizes in bizarrely raucous fashion as a madhouse of pure insanity. He's afraid of his mother, who he calls early on and whose ominous presence will inform the rest of the story. You see, it's almost her birthday, and as Beau is preparing to fly to her, many surreal setbacks (including loud gaslighting neighbors, stolen keys and luggage, and a water outage) stop him. She manipulatively complains before dismissing him, inciting the plot, which is effectively his journey to her.

Beau's odyssey through the world is hard to define, as we are presented it primarily through what he must experience it as being. His anxiety is palpable, but we're not really given a precise diagnosis, even by his psychiatrist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who prescribes a new experimental drug that must be taken with water. Naturally, when Beau's tap water stops running, he panics, getting the whole thing off to a bang when he wanders across the essentially war-torn neighborhood street to buy water from the convenience store and, in his absence, allows the entire block party of criminals into his unit to trash it. Then he gets a call from a UPS delivery person who says his mother is dead. The whole thing is the definition of a tragicomedy, and by this point it's clear that Beau is little more than a little boy who never really developed and is suddenly dealing with an aging body. He also needs to deal with some serious mommy issues.

Apart from conversations about Beau and his mother (played to award-worthy perfection by Patti LuPone), their relationship, and of course the psychosexual mental disorders that characterize both, it's important to note that the film equally demonizes everyone, and while we are clearly meant to follow Beau's journey, he's not exactly a likable or even reliable point of reference. More importantly, Aster clearly wants all of his film to be symbolic of other, loftier ideas, riddles with which we are meant to dwell and meditate on our own relationships with everything from psychotropic drugs, society as a whole, domesticity, parent-child relations, virginity and sexuality, existential purpose, artistic license in storytelling, mental illness and disorders, and of course questioning the dangerous codependency of our cultural systems. Sound like a lot for one film to handle? It is.

And Aster does it all with such passion and enthusiasm, it's remarkably easy to get swept up in it. Ruthlessly funny, alarmingly vindictive, Aster takes us on a trippy roller coaster of excess, forcing us to feel at once claustrophobic and agoraphobic. How he does it will take many theorists time to unpack, but he does it apparently effortlessly, forcing us into a headspace where we have to laugh to keep from screaming, and where we must constantly attempt to keep ourselves oriented even as it makes us question our own reality. The narrative is, despite all these chaotic musings, sharply defined by distinct chapters of various tonal shifts with unique characters all along the way. There is mother herself, who finally appears near the end in all her glory and horror, aptly named Mona (close to mom, close to money, and of course the sexual and painful "moan" that she offers multiple times). Her surname, and presumably Beau's, is Wassermann, which combines the German for water and of course an exaggerated man, of which there is no strong example in this story (Aster's use of water would be a fascinating study here, used variously as amniotic fluid, a dirty bathtub, a means of medicating, a theatrical flood, and the floor of a prosecutorial arena).

When Beau eventually finds himself injured and taken to the home of a doctor and his family (played by Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), I was reminded briefly of the unhinged and surreal family of I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It's kind of funny except that it's deeply horrifying, and the themes of filial guilt and complicity are hammered home several times before Beau flees in terror. Later, he finds himself in a Shakespearean forest complete with traveling band of actors, and he completely loses himself in their play; we're treated to an animated sequence of experiencing Beau's own fantasy story as if on the stage, and this is where the arts all collide, where Aster himself hammers home his own messaging about the relationship between art, the subject, the object, and the audience who pours themselves into it. It should also be noted that Beau occasionally endures flashbacks to his youth, where his psychosexual issues are rooted, and wherein he attempts to relate to a young girl his own age as well as a younger version of his mother, played similarly to award-worthy perfection by a mesmerizing Zoe Lister-Jones.

Despite my only barely scratching the surface of this movie here, let it suffice to say that it requires repeat viewings and lots of dialogue with other viewers. I'd love to hear Aster's shot-by-shot commentary on this, but I doubt he'd do one, much less explain the significance of everything. It's meant to be interpreted and projected upon, mused and debated over, and ultimately enjoyed for the holistic, horrific experience it is. Endlessly funny and deeply disturbing, Beau is Afraid is unlike anything we've ever seen, and it's already in my top ten favorites of the year.

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

(This post also includes my brief thoughts on the entire franchise, as I haven't posted about it before, so please bear with me.)

If you don't know the Evil Dead franchise, you actually already do. The original 1981 film, an independent horror experience shot in rural Tennessee by a then-unknown Sam Raimi, is famously one of the most financially and critically successful indie films of all time. It effectively canonized now cliché tropes: a secluded cabin in haunted woods, its secret cellar filled with horrific artifacts, phrases like "dead by dawn," and of course the warning to never read the mysterious Latin phrase in a bloodstained book. Its release at the start of the '80s signified a turn in horror sensibilities from the moralistic slasher craze of the '70s to the meta-horror of the late '90s, though it (and Wes Craven's 1996 Scream) was fairly unique in its brazen aptitude for both horror and surrealist comedy until well after the millennium. It, like its contemporaries -- a serialized mess of slasher sequels that littered the '80s -- spawned a franchise, one that has perhaps the greatest cult following of the decade.

The Evil Dead is an amazing movie, both in terms of its real-life production and its gleefully garish portrayal of specifically amoral vicious chaos. Some will naturally see its lurid colorscape and low-budget effects as humorous, and Raimi himself would no doubt embrace that reaction; I've always found that first film deeply disturbing because of its desperation to shock and scare with such a small budget and no notable names to market. Its sequels (Evil Dead II in 1987 and Army of Darkness in 1992) cemented its legacy as a horror-comedy, as both of those leaned much more heavily into the wacky, metafictional nature of their bizarre concepts: the first sequel literally re-enacts the plot of the first in its frenzied opening sequence before basically making fun of itself for the rest of its frenetic bloodbath of a plot, while the second sequel involves time travel to the Middle Ages and a lot of action and humor and basically no real horror. I personally find these films dull at best, but many fans enjoy their "groovy" sensibility. Star Bruce Campbell and Raimi went on -- along with basically every other major horror franchise -- to adapt a sequel series for cable in the mid-2010s titled Ash vs Evil Dead, airing on Starz and which I just couldn't get into.

But the franchise wasn't dead yet, not even in a reanimated "Deadite" form as its titular villains came to be called. Fede Alvarez (writer and director of The Girl in the Spider's Web, the amazing Don't Breathe, and the latter's atrocious sequel) created a remake of the original, marketed it as the scariest film ever made, and released it in spring of 2013. I saw that on opening weekend and had my first panic attack in a cinema. Its hype may have been off-putting and its horror may not be for everyone, but it was indeed one of the goriest and scariest films I'd ever seen at that time (although Scott Derrickson's 2012 Sinister might hold the first-place prize for this viewer). Completely devoid of comedy, if not bleak humor, Alvarez's remake features electrifyingly higher stakes, sharper focus on character development, and no small amount of unrelenting bloody body horror.

Its grimy, Gothic trappings belie an acute awareness of groundbreaking effects and postmodern boundary-pushing excess. One might go so far as to say its embodies camp like the original, whereas the sequels were, at best, kitsch; that is to say, the original and the remake take themselves and their subject matter very seriously indeed, so much so as they revel in its unreality and its exuberance, which is really the essence of camp. One would have hoped for more Evil Dead films in the vein of Alvarez's entry, but a decade passed with no such luck.

Out of the void, then, prophetically, Evil Dead Rise indeed, from Irish writer/director Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground) and produced by Raimi and Campbell. Cronin's vision was definitely inspired by Alvarez's film; the stakes are unbearably high, the tension constantly ratchets up, and his inventive use of gore makes your eyes pop as you flinch. Yet, crucially, Cronin also revives a more Raimi-esque comedic sensibility, both in terms of a fresh and bizarre setting, his equally hilarious and terrifying depiction of the Deadites, and a slight withdrawal from pure body horror. Let's dive in.

Setting and characters. Abandoning a haunted woods and remote cabin, the plot of Evil Dead Rise is set in a high-rise apartment building in Los Angeles. While this suggests a hell of a lot more diabolic mayhem, it's quickly revealed that the building has been condemned and will be torn down soon, so very few residents remain. On an upper floor, a small family packs and prepares to leave, though the recently single mother Ellie, a tattoo artist, has no idea where she'll go next. Her teenagers Bridget and Danny can help a bit with the youngest, Kassie, but they are in dire straits. Suddenly Ellie's sister Beth arrives, though their relationship appears strained as Beth's professed job as guitar technician is derided by Ellie as her being a "groupie." There are a few neighbors, including an older man with a gun and a cat, and a younger hunk with faith, but these are clearly meant to be fodder for what's to come.

It should be noted that the film does include a cabin in the woods as part of its framing sequence. We start with a furious airborne charge above a stream through the forest before careening out over a wooded lake (not unlike in The Shining) and coming to a dock where three young adults are on vacation in a nearby imposing A-frame cabin. One of the women is sick and resting until she violently attacks the others -- effectively setting the tone of the movie -- and levitates, seemingly possessed, above the water as the title text appears gloriously behind her. This scene is unrelated to the plot of the film and is only tied in by the closing scene, as the young woman leaves the apartment building to go on vacation with her cousin and boyfriend and gets attacked by the swooping first-person camera just like Ash in the original film. It's a cute throwback, and nicely atmospheric, but ultimately isn't more than an unrelated short in the ever-expanding Evil Dead universe.

The stakes. So while the main plot takes place in the apartment building, it's not so dissimilar from a remote cabin as to cause much upset. Before long, an earthquake rattles the building, taking out the staircase and cracking open the foundations; the building apparently was once a bank, and so beneath its parking garage lie the old buried vaults. Danny, dangerously jumping in despite the threat of aftershocks, discovers the vault of a priestly order and collects a book and some vinyl records to investigate and hopefully hock. Taking them up to his room, he uses his DJ tech to play the records, which tell of the priests' battles with bloodthirsty demonic forces and speaks cursed phrases from the Naturom Demonto, the book, which is apparently another version of the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. As we expect, the invisible demons attack and everything goes haywire. Despite the additional, obviously doomed characters, we're primed to be scared more than usual in this franchise because the main characters are all family, and more than half of them are children. This movie is not scared to endanger, brutalize, and even kill children, which is still extraordinary in the genre.

The Deadites. Alyssa Sutherland plays Ellie as both the hard-pressed and strong-willed single mother and as the possessed version of herself, psychologically tormenting her children and sister even as she attempts to physically torture them. Her physicality is nothing short of amazing, to say nothing of her nightmare-inducing, wide-eyed and toothy visage, but it's her voice that really chills. She sounds like a drag queen or a caricatured "homosexual" from at least forty years ago, swallowing her tone and drawing out phrases with something between vocal fry and mocking effeminacy. Her nasty little jabs at Beth and cloying attempts to persuade (seduce?) her children are laced with both honey and venom, making her easily the most interesting version of a Deadite we've ever seen. The effect on her children, specifically Nell Fisher's Kassie, is never less than horrifying for the audience. (It should be noted that Gabrielle Echols and Morgan Davies are really wonderful as the older siblings, and we can hope to see more of these young actors as their careers take off.)

This has been a long post, but I'm nearly done, because really this film is meant to be experienced rather than talked about. Its internal logic doesn't hold water, but in an Evil Dead movie, we only really need it to hold blood. And that it does in spades, with so much inspired carnage it's hard to think of much body horror not featured in this film, or at least threatened in it. It proudly wears its influences on its sleeve, making it as much a commentary on other horror films as on its own franchise. The climax involves another incarnated demonic entity called the Marauder (not unlike the Abomination of Alvarez's film) and so much blood it may as well have been filmed with a scarlet lens cover. Not everything works well; apart from the general need to suspend disbelief within its premise alone, the screenplay works hard to try and build and explain every bit into itself like a Chekhov play, and actually now that I say it, this whole thing probably would work just as well as a play. Because as an Evil Dead film, we don't need or really even want explanations and exposition for everything.

Ultimately, it's all a hell of a lot of fun, and hopefully this entry will ignite some new installments in the same vein. While opening some veins, of course.

Renfield (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

After a century of providing human meals to his boss, Count Dracula, R.M. Renfield has lost the joy in his life. His status as Dracula's familiar grants him some benefits, such as gaining super strength and speed when he eats a bug, but this is usually only necessary when he's procuring a victim or killing people trying to stop him from doing so. After a close call with some vampire hunters, the two relocate to New Orleans for some reason to hide and recuperate; while Dracula heals, Renfield attends a support group for those in abusive relationships, learning to identify his boss as a narcissist and their dynamic as dangerously codependent.

Nicholas Hoult is a wonderful young actor, and he works hard here to make the character as written come to life. He's helped by wonderful costumes and makeup and hairstyling, to be sure, and his wide-eyed, nervous earnestness is the sort that made young Hugh Grant a star. But as such, and in this particular movie where he eats a bug and then kicks ass a la John Wick, he feels a little too precious. Perhaps Renfield wouldn't be so flaccid if not opposite a particularly butch Awkwafina as the only cop in New Orleans who isn't corrupt. Her character Rebecca is on a mission to avenge her late father, also a cop, in a white man's occupation, and while her performance is typically reliable, it just doesn't belong in this movie.

Or at least not this movie as it currently exists. Frankly, the screenplay by Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman deserved to be workshopped and edited a lot more, because there is either too much or too little in this film, depending on your preference. If they wanted to create an action thriller about Renfield and Rebecca kicking ass as anarchist justice-seekers in the French Quarter, that could have been fun. I'd have much preferred this film to not include any of the crime family subplot or corrupt cop drama, instead focusing on the brilliantly perverse relationship of Renfield and Dracula, which could have come to light as the former developed in relationship with Rebecca. How great would that have been, to have Rebecca and the support group help Renfield see the toxicity of his servitude, and then to have Rebecca slowly realize her new boyfriend is the serial killer she's hunting? That's a story that this movie's vision would have served exquisitely well, and it would have supported much more real development and cleverness in the screenplay without all the unnecessary and dull drama. Alas, it's not the one we got.

Notice I haven't even discussed the whole criminal element of this film, and that's because it's all inane. One of Renfield's victims -- he tries to only kill "bad men," but bad men do tend to associate with other bad men -- is a member of the Lobo crime family that apparently runs New Orleans. Though not quite wolvish, the name does suggest antagonism for our protagonist and his boss; they come looking for revenge and run afoul of Renfield and Rebecca, starting a petty war. Ben Schwartz is uniformly obnoxious as Teddy Lobo, the main enforcer of the crime family, but thankfully its matriarch Bellafrancesca is played by the glorious Shohreh Aghdashloo, dressed in stunningly beautiful white power suit, who really deserves to be in many more movies.

Everyone will be talking about Nicolas Cage's performance as the undead bloodsucker, so we may as well get into it. If you know me at all, you know Cage is just not to my liking, but at least this time he knows full well what kind of movie he's making, and that his role in it is certainly catered to his unique, ahem, talents. His Dracula is both maniacally disorienting and endlessly surprising, charming even as he uncannily disconnects from reality, though he does tangibly labor through the oversized teeth and excessive prosthetics for most of his screen time. Which, it should be noted, is thankfully not as much as one would expect. Basically, if you like his antics generally, you'll enjoy him here; if you don't, it's more of the same, though at least he's clearly having fun with the material, dressed as it is in delightfully Gothic trappings. It should also be noted this is his first film in over a decade produced by a major studio; despite his bizarre and prolific filmography, I'm glad this is the kind of project he saw fit to join.

The main premise and certain scenes are brilliant -- specifically anything with the support group, led by a hilarious Brandon Scott Jones -- and the concept of turning the Dracula/Renfield dynamic into a modern toxic relationship is pure gold. I wish the film leaned more intentionally into exploring that for all its comedic and, honestly, tragic worth. There's a great film here about sensitive and thoughtful exploration of servitude and sacrifice, keeping all the humor and horror that go with the characters, that could have been mobilized by a focused screenplay. And while the cartoonish violence and bloodshed is a lot of fun, most of it comes in frenetic action sequences basically interchangeable with ones in the Kingsman franchise. If I wanted to see vampires in an action movie, there are other options than Dracula (actually, there are others with Dracula, so why shoehorn this concept into the same mold?). Ultimately, this feels like it could have been simply a spin-off of What We Do in the Shadows in terms of deadpan humor that bridges vampire horror and modern sensibilities, fabulously dramatic mise en scène and lighting, and campy humanizing of literary figures. Its cleverness is undermined and sidetracked, however, by its bizarre compulsion for blood and action.

The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

Russell Crowe is a strange bird. Often lauded for his tough-guy persona and featured in films that require that role, he has typically been a solid if one-note performer; offscreen, his personal life is laced with real-life violence that for some reason hasn't been as controversial or denounced as other, less "macho" men. I've rarely found him to be compelling, but I do often enjoy films that star or feature him (for example, his woefully miscast turn in Les Miserables or his surprisingly insightful portrayal of the biblical Noah). So when we heard he would be leading a new exorcism movie, I was intrigued. The genre, trailblazed of course by William Friedkin and his brilliant casting of Max von Sydow, regularly features an older, respected character actor in the role of senior exorcist. Think Anthony Hopkins in The Rite or Tom Wilkinson in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Russell Crowe has apparently now reached that status.

Armed as he is with an Italian accent and full priestly regalia, Crowe here plays a highly fictionalized interpretation of Father Gabriele Amorth, famously the Vatican's longest-serving modern exorcist, whose many autobiographical books serve as source material for this film. The real-life man was the subject of a documentary by Friedkin himself in 2017, and his cases number so high that this film seems eager to capitalize on the potential for a franchise (not unlike how The Conjuring franchise leaps off the Warrens' case files). But Crowe's performance as Amorth is what will draw audiences, and he knows it, so he plays it up to the max; he's thoughtful, hilarious, and daring in this role, taking the film both far more seriously than I expected and clearly having a lot of fun the whole time. He's truly electrifying to behold.

Amorth, as dramatized here, is a bit of a Western action hero dressed as a world-weary priest, complete with a whiskey flask he uses to wet his whistle regularly. There's really nothing he hasn't seen, but this time, he's in a bit over his head. He's called to an abbey in rural Spain, where an American family has taken ownership of the property and is working to renovate and sell it. Mother Julia (Alex Essoe), daughter Amy (Laurel Marsden), and son Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) are still reeling from the death of the husband/father: the mother's intense task-orientation, the daughter's burgeoning sexuality, and the son's muteness make them prime candidates for possession. It doesn't take long for Henry to go full Pazuzu-style dangerous, with lots of profanity and blasphemy, lesions and vomiting, levitation and contortion.

The opening sequence, it should be noted, is crucial to our understanding of this film, as it directly informs the aesthetic director Julius Avery (who also directed the wonderful Overlord in 2018) employs. In it, Amorth exorcises a demon from a young Italian boy and then slaughters the pig into which the demon was sent. When chastised by a tribunal, he declares it was no real exorcism, but rather a bit of theatre to psychologically help an ill or disordered patient. This recalls the sociological discussions of the rite in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but rather than wading into further medical or legal waters here, Avery simply takes the notion of theatrics and makes that our viewing experience of this film. Like Friedkin did to some extent with poor Regan and her head-spinning pea soup, Avery is going to take us on a ride through hell to experience Grand Guignol possession horror. It's a shocking and brilliant choice, but it won't be for everyone.

Once Amorth gets to the abbey, the main story really gets going, and again, this is where The Pope's Exorcist aggressively toys with our expectations. Some people may dislike this movie because it isn't all that "scary." The possession-related material we've seen before, if not always as brightly colored and frenetically stylized as this. And rather than building characters (other than Amorth himself), the film is more concerned with jumping around to tell lots of plot strands: we keep jumping back to Rome to see the Pope (Franco Nero) reading about the abbey and learning the truth of what evil is hidden there. The "busy-ness" of the screenplay will doubtless be derided as impatient and unfocused, but I found it just disorienting enough to better serve the story. In fact, I'd consider this more of a horror-action flick, in which a Bible-slinging Western-wannabe John Wayne-type priest arrives in a town of demons and has to take them on headfirst with no backup but a helpless mother and daughter and an eager but innocent young partner (Father Esquibel, played by Daniel Zovatto of It Follows and Don't Breathe and Fear the Walking Dead, and ABC's Revenge, which I note with personal delight).

I enjoyed this movie probably far more than I should have, but this is my blog, so that's okay. Other than a surprisingly effective Crowe, it features beautiful cinematography (though the editing is unfortunate) and a fine mix of score and sound editing. I quite liked Essoe, despite her being hamstrung by the screenplay, though the children are both obnoxious, as is so often the case in this genre. The voice of the demon is the usually wonderful Ralph Ineson, though I labored through most of the movie thinking it was a bored Ray Winstone. Finally, I'll note that the main theme of the film, as I see it, is that your sins will invariably follow you. Most exorcism movies turn this into a character study of the priests and victims; this one refocuses the theme on the Church itself, which is a delicious touch. As such, it kind of embraces a Dan Brown-esque critique of the Inquisition specifically, basically saying the Devil has orchestrated the Church's evils for centuries, which is historically and ethically reprehensible, but makes for fun entertainment if you don't put much stock in it.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

We're all pretty familiar now with films adapted from video games, but how do you adapt a role-playing game? As co-writers and co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (and co-writer Michael Gilio) capably demonstrate in Dungeons & Dragons, it's not all that different. You choose a specific story to tell, first off, and if it's original, so much the better. Of course you target the already existing fan base, and sprinkle in healthy doses of fan service in terms of insider knowledge and Easter eggs. You also need to be appealing to potential new fans, which can be done through casting choices, narrative accessibility, and marketing that doesn't alienate those unfamiliar with the material. Honor Among Thieves, a title which suggests Paramount's hopes for a new franchise, does these things.

While this is a big-budget, big-screen fantasy adventure in every sense of those words, and as such should be seen on the silver screen, I confess myself occasionally lost while watching. Not lost in that I couldn't follow the story, but lost because I'm pretty unfamiliar with the IP, and so the endless fantasy jargon used tended to slide in one ear and out the other. Seeing it with subtitles would have been ideal, as I wasn't always sure about the titles used (bard, paladin, rogue, druid, barbarian) or proper nouns (names and places are not obvious or familiar). Even when I did catch these elements, their significance often escaped me. Some of this may have been the result of sound editing, which often reduced key dialogue to indiscernible garble. 

Without these, though, the film is still a delightful romp, one that intangibly conveys the sense that it is making itself up as we go along, much like the real game. The main character, a bard named Edgin (Chris Pine) whose wife was murdered, takes his daughter and they become thieves with a ragtag troupe including Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) and Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), the latter of whom betrays them with his secret accomplice, a demonic Red Wizard named Sofina. After breaking out of prison, Edgin and Holga embark on a quest to build a new team, rescue Edgin's daughter, and save the land from Forge and Sofina, who want to rule with the power of a zombie army. It's a lot, and while the apparently unfocused narrative wasn't to my liking, I see how it pays homage to the wink-and-nod creativity of the game on which it is based.

To be honest, the whole experience made me feel a bit high. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but between a talking corpse answering questions not unlike the bridge-keeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a "fluffy" red dragon too big for its enclosure, and the generally frenetic CGI action sequences, I have a hard time now remembering what all happened in this bloated, overstuffed funhouse ride. For example, the undeniably beautiful Regé-Jean Page shows up, and I cannot recall who he played, why he was there, or what all he did. And I don't think that's entirely my fault. Even a bit of breathing room for the film, maybe via a narrator, to do some basic world-building would have helped me a lot. Then again, maybe I just need to see it with subtitles.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

Score: 5 / 5

Delayed, no doubt, by the pandemic, John Wick has returned to us for my favorite film in the franchise. Four years after Parabellum, we jump back in shortly after the events of that film as our title character (Keanu Reeves) prepares, along with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), to get revenge on the High Table for their treachery and cruelty. After Wick kills the Elder, "the one who sits above the Table," the remaining members empower the Marquis de Gramont to use any means necessary to stop him. The Marquis, played by a delicious Bill Skarsgard, makes short work of getting started, destroying the Continental and executing Charon (the late Lance Reddick) and excommunicating Winston (Ian McShane). He then enlists a retired assassin (Donnie Yen), on threat of murdering his daughter, to find and kill Wick and end it all.

It's a lot very fast, and if you're not already on board with the series, you'll be overwhelmed quickly. Thankfully, this chapter was written more like the first than the previous two, trimming the world-building and mythology of this shadowy organization of ruthless killers and focusing much more on Wick himself and the cost this lifestyle has had on his body and mind. Sadly, many of the characters we've picked up along the way are absent here -- I missed Angelica Huston and Halle Berry, but with all the globe-spanning action, you can't include everybody -- but I liked the sharper dramatic focus and impossibly lengthy action sequences. Which is saying a lot for this film, as it is almost three hours long!

The final hour (or so, I completely lost track of time) of this film is one of the most electrifying action sequences I've ever seen. Period. Urgent and alarming, beautiful and brutal -- much like the series in general -- it makes a strong case for artistic and elegant violence. It's not wholly unlike some video games, which master action in ways few films do: there are clear stakes, the focus is on one (or at most two) characters, and there is little editing to distract from choreography and martial arts. But this is true of every action sequence in these films, not just this final hour (which takes place on a lengthy stone staircase below Sacré-Cœur; did I mention that this film mostly takes place in a gorgeously shot Paris?). There's one chase-and-fight scene around the Arc de Triomphe that had my eyes popping our of my skull, and another in a bizarrely trippy nightclub surrounded by dancers who generally seem uncaring about the violence. Apart from the skill with which these sequences were designed and executed, one wonders about the intention behind them, perhaps commenting on the ways regular passers-by don't seem to notice -- or care -- about bodies piling up within eyesight.

Most people come to these movies for Reeves, and he's at his best here, injecting his vengeful, violent protagonist with a weariness and emotional exhaustion that is pitch-perfect for (SPOILER ALERT) what may well be his final film in the franchise. Like Reeves or not, you have to admire his ability to know exactly what the film around him needs his character to do, and he fulfills it in every moment. I come to these movies more for Dan Laustsen's cinematography, which reaches impossibly brilliant heights this time around. I hope this isn't the end of the series, but if it is, it's a hell of a way to go out.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

If you're a fan of the first Shazam movie, you'll probably like this one, because it's a whole lot more of the same. If you're not a fan of it -- or of the DC franchise in general -- you probably won't enjoy this one, because it's more of the same. These IPs and their associated fandoms are getting so fraught with anger and judgment that they're all pretty toxic now. I personally really like the DCEU movies so far, so I was very excited for this; the first Shazam was absolutely delightful in its wacky, fun underdog story and brazenly balls-out mythology. This sequel ups the ante in its scope, pacing, and spectacle for sure, and its plot is, for me, fabulously interesting and entertaining. It also skimps on some of the elements that mattered most to me in the first film, namely the dynamics of the beautiful foster family at its heart. 

Two years after the first movie, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) and his "Shazamily" -- called the Marvel Family in comics, but thankfully not here to confuse the DCEU with the MCU -- fully embrace their powers (secret from their foster parents) to help others. In the city of brotherly love, they save people from a collapsing bridge but are called out in the media for not saving the bridge itself. The kids don't work so well as a team, as they are growing apart and exploring other interests. Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) navigates being bullied at school but strikes up a budding romance with the new girl, Anne (Rachel Zegler), to whom he reveals his secret identity.

Meanwhile, two goddesses break into a museum and steal the Wizard's broken staff and take it to him (Djimon Hounsou) to repair it. They declare themselves the Daughters of Atlas (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), intent on avenging their father and reclaiming the Wizard's power. Their mysterious third sister is soon revealed to be Anne, and the trio abduct Freddy and put an impassable dome over Philadelphia to force the Shazamily to relinquish their power. By about the halfway point of this film, the plot gets fairly muddied; there's a great deal about a Golden Apple and the Tree of Life and its potential to recreate the realm of the gods and/or destroy the earth. It's all a bit of a mess, but there's no shortage of visual flair or special effects, so there's no reason to fret.

Unfortunately, all the action and fantasy means not much time to love the characters, so sweet little Darla and sweet, closeted Pedro only really get surface-level treatment. We get a bit more of the adult/superhero versions of these characters, which is fun, especially with Freddy's alter ego (Adam Brody) and of course Billy's (the always charming Zachary Levi). Billy and Freddy, as both versions of themselves, could make Shazam a really interesting, coming-of-age hormonal buddy movie, and while this movie flirts with that possibility, it never really goes there. Billy's fantasies revolve around Wonder Woman, who in a shocking and delightful turn of events does indeed cameo here. 

Given the constantly changing reliability of DC and its many media facets, it's hard to know what will happen moving forward. We can certainly hope we'll get another Shazam movie, one that allows its central characters to breathe a bit. But if this is all we get, at least it's a lot of fun!

Boston Strangler (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

Newspaper or investigative procedurals are a strange genre, one that often reaches award-winning heights. They tend to feature hot topics as well as A-list actors to portray the real people involved, and the most successful ones turn unlikely stories (due to the time or scope of the investigation or the dull background work involved) into riveting character studies or ideological manifestos. There are more examples than I could list here, but the new film about the Boston Strangler murders, which recently debuted on Hulu exclusively, belongs to an even stranger niche of this genre. Much like David Fincher's Zodiac, this picture tries to be a bit of a thriller and mystery while dramatizing the investigative journalism that made the case so infamous.

The only thing that writer/director Matt Ruskin really takes from Fincher's masterpiece (yeah, I went there) is his subdued color palette and brooding tone. Operating mostly without direct threat from the killer, the protagonists here function less as potential victims and more as journalistic heroes, which is lovely even as it removes most of the tension inherent in Ruskin's approach to the material. As a tribute to Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, the Boston women who broke news of the serial killer in the 1960s, the film succeeds, giving names and actions to the real-life people more than the mysterious but more widely recognizable criminal or criminals.

McLaughlin is played, most notably, by Keira Knightley, whose accent work is great if a little distracting. She's a Lifestyle writer at the Boston Record American and a wife and mother at home. After learning about three older women (not necessarily the usual demographic) who were recently raped and murdered in similar fashion -- strangled with underwear decoratively knotted -- she and her colleague Cole (Carrie Coon, who performs admirably in a role that feels undercooked and/or butchered by edits) pursue the connection in order to warn other women in Boston. Their efforts are hampered, of course, by sexism in their workplace as well as domestically; other departments don't want to collaborate with these women who are in way over their heads -- not to mention that different precincts are botching their own investigations and are unwilling to share valuable details with each other, much less with reporters -- while Loretta's family life suffers (her husband is played by Morgan Spector, who really should have had more to do in the screenplay if this was meant to be a significant part of the film).

Perhaps the most interesting development in this film, for me, was the moments in which the killer is all but forgotten. It's not until after McLaughlin and Cole lambast the Boston police in the paper for negligence that they start getting creepy calls from threatening men. Loretta even sees a figure stalking her family. Is it the killer harassing them, or is it the "good men" they've pissed off? These women are apparently the only ones who really care about getting word out, and their place in a male-dominated world is increasingly hazardous. Thankfully, the film doesn't fully tilt into thriller territory, but rather (like Dark Waters) lets the potential for these threats dissipate as quickly as they materialized. It's far more important to Ruskin (as writer) that our heroes are resilient, determined, and thorough in their work, pursuing leads through multiple dead ends and roadblocks.

Ruskin's mishandled direction, though, doesn't stop with his piggybacked color palette or languid pace. He uses a somber score that feels shoehorned into the wrong film and lets it overwhelm sensitive moments. His visuals are repetitive and dolorous, uninspired and drab in ways serial police procedurals on television long ago overcame. Then there are the handful of actual murder scenes, which are filmed more like Dateline reenactments than like part of the actual movie in which they've been inserted. Similarly, and while the two leading women are directed well, virtually none of the men are: David Dastmalchian is as creepy as ever as a suspect, Chris Cooper is laughably cliché as the stubborn boss, and Bill Camp never gets much to chew on. Alessandro Nivola is arguably the most interesting character, as a weary cop who eventually helps the women in their investigation. If Ruskin could have committed to dramatizing the personal cost of McLaughlin and Cole's lengthy investigation, or even relaying the riveting case as a mystery/thriller that has never been satisfyingly resolved, that could have been a great movie. As it is, it's entertaining and interesting, if only for a modest diversion.