Ready or Not (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

In easily the biggest surprise yet this year, Ready or Not combines pitch-black humor with murderous thrills to perfectly entertaining effect.

On the night of her marriage into the wealthy Le Domas family, Grace is invited to partake in a family tradition: a game night, in which she must draw a card from a mysterious box and the family will play the game on that card. Sounds simple enough, but when the box delivers the game of Hide and Seek, the family members can scarcely mask their own horror. The game begins, but as Grace navigates the darkened mansion (still in her ghostly wedding dress, no less), the family members arm themselves with archaic weapons and prepare to hunt. It's The Most Dangerous Game by another name.

Then again, the game itself would be more dangerous if the hunters actually wanted to do the deed. See, the family isn't just a bunch of crazed killers as the trailer suggested. They are rather obligated to pursue Grace based on the traditional rule of the game, handed down for generations, since the patriarch of the Le Domas clan struck a Faustian bargain for fortune. Or, at least, so the myth goes. So we have a normal, stupid rich family with plenty of internal drama forced to engage in a ritualistic sacrifice in order to (supposedly) stay alive the following day. It's hilarious, because several members of the family don't even believe in this tradition, and so they must navigate between solidarity with the family, their affection for Grace, following tradition, and of course their own not-so-latent capitalist bloodlust.

The cast, led by a magnificent Samara Weaving, is uniformly excellent. The script is clever and chilling, knowing and witty, turning in somewhat unpredictable ways to an ending that flips more than once. And while the cinematography leaves more than a little to be desired -- its handheld levelness is disappointing in a film that so aggressively challenges convention -- the gorgeous sets and costumes distract you enough to compensate.

It's the rare film that suggests almost too much to sound entertaining. Casual discussion could range anywhere from feminist diatribes about misogyny in horror to celebrations of messianic womanhood (don't tell me the scene where she descends into a hellish pit and then ascends by getting her hand stabbed through with a nail isn't obvious), from Marxist critiques of diabolical sacrifices for capital to historicized surveys of cinematic family rites gone horribly wrong, from Satanic panic to revenge thrills, and beyond. And yet, for all its weight and depth, Ready or Not is also just a ton of fun. As any game should be.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Trapped in a ruined, underwater city with blind, ravenous sharks? Yes please!

The sequel (that really isn't a sequel at all) to 47 Meters Down shares a title with its predecessor even though the characters are almost certainly not that far down. They are, however, notably "uncaged" as the subtitle declares, if you don't count the crumbling walls and pillars and ceilings of a temple where Central American natives made blood sacrifices as a cage. Whereas the original film straddled a disturbing line between an agoraphobic ocean floor and a claustrophobic sense of darkness and pressure, Uncaged is so claustrophobic it would have been scary enough without the sharks.

Terrible title aside, this movie's fabulously absurd premise -- like so many horror movies -- makes for an effective thrill ride. It's one of those where almost everything that could go wrong does, and you're giggling even as you gasp. A group of young women, alone in an idyllic lagoon that nobody knows about, decide to utilize some scuba gear and investigate the antechamber of the underwater Mayan temple. Of course, they'll just circle around once and come back out, right? That's the plan, until one of them chases a strange-looking fish around a pillar. It screams at her -- yes, the damned thing screams -- and it's so weird and funny I almost forgot what movie I was watching. In her fright, the woman collapses the pillar, separating the girls in blinding sediment and blocking their escape route.

Apparently the collapse also attracts (perhaps opens the way) for predators as well, as suddenly the shape of a great white looms large in the confined space. It's remarkably scary, seeing a gaping maw of jagged teeth approaching you in the dark tunnels with hardly any wiggle room. And while the sharks are, by nature, frightening, these sharks have some additional spooky qualities. Having apparently gone blind in their hellish tunnels, the sharks seem to have a heightened sense of hearing. At least so the pitiful dialogue proclaims multiple times, attributing it to evolution (though I don't think that's how the process works). I had hoped this element would turn the film into a sort of underwater version of Don't Breathe, but it doesn't.

Lost opportunities aside, the film plays out instead like The Descent, if with a larger budget and more spectacular delivery. Director Johannes Roberts has a knack for weird, interesting, and funny images that are also quite disturbing, and they blast out here in full force. My favorite includes a scene in which the women, having found John Corbett's "Dad" character, follow him to an escape route: another isolated sinkhole with a rope to climb. Of course the exhausted girls will have trouble ascending, but when the sharks begin to circle beneath them, one panics and -- a magnificent moment -- flips upside down on the rope so that her head falls into the water and she screams as the shark approaches.

It all gets really weird before it's over, including the completely bonkers inclusion of an underwater whirlpool -- remember, we're supposed to be in a submerged temple -- and I worried briefly we'd have a subterranean sharknado. But the weirdness works if you just let it take you, and we end up with a really fun ride. It could have leaned into its own absurdity more, but isn't that true of all of us?

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A new franchise to compete with IT and Stranger Things this is not. But Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a heck of a lot of fun, and plenty spooky enough to deserve a place in your horror library.

Much like the collections of short stories that inspired the title, this film works best in stringing together a more or less cohesive narrative between scary episodes. Though one might have supposed the source material could fit better into a serial show, screenwriters Dan and Kevin Hageman (writers of The Lego Movie and Hotel Transylvania) have attempted the difficult and thankless task of making a new story that incorporates disparate elements of someone else's perverse mind. What we get is a sort of screwball coming-of-age movie centered on a Loser's Club of misfit kids -- only too typical for the genre.

They discover -- yes, while sneaking into the spooky old house of the town's founding family -- a book of scary stories and awaken the angry spirit of the book's writer, the tormented (and demented) daughter of the founding family, whose family they had tortured her to prevent her revealing their evil deeds (poisoning the town with mercury). Weird, right? I know. But not nearly as weird as what this girl writes. She continues telling her stories, which bring nightmarish plagues on the town intent on killing still more children: monsters of various shapes and sizes with missing or extra limbs, usually intent on eating their prey. (At least, they appear hungry; but the children they take seem to disappear wholly, and the ending suggests a sequel in which they might be rescued.)

The whole thing smacks of Guillermo del Toro -- producer and story creator -- for both better and worse, and the story of Sarah Bellows's book of stories is the stuff of funky fairytale. Nostalgia seems a strong design point here, but the film works hard to subvert any illusions about the "good ol' days" myth Trumpian America insists on idealizing. Indeed, the film takes place on the eve of Richard Nixon's election, and his campaign posters have swastikas painted across them! Police hound young Latino man Ramon for dodging the draft (and yes, Vietnam is pointedly identified as the backdrop to the ensuing weirdness here), and racist slurs are hurled his way by both the bully and the cops.

Similarly, the scares are creepy but often rely on surprise rather than earned disturbance. The monsters themselves -- surprising, yes, but also pretty gross -- look less like Stephen Gammell's horrifying illustrations than like del Toro's brainchildren of Pan's Labyrinth. I definitely would have preferred more atmosphere in this movie than nostalgia, and more of the raw, shadowy horror of those original drawings. Their aura was pre-Internet; it was as if you could still see the spilled ink or even graphite shavings on the paper. They felt fresh and violent, crafted for your eyes alone in some darkened closet by a deranged mind. The images of this film, on the other hand, feel like what they are: latex, bodysuits, prosthetics and movement artists, and some handy dandy big-budget CGI.

Then again, I remember precious little of those stories that kept me up nights as a kid, other than some specific images of a splay-legged scarecrow, a spider-infested boil on a girl's face, a pale smiling figure with a mouth far too large. Their precise lines blurred from memory, this movie plays like a Greatest Hits album of what we remember, which makes even the scares feel strangely pleasant, a sort of familiar horror we can revisit and appreciate anew.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In the grand tradition of movies made about movies, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood showcases Tarantino's ability to flex his aesthetic tendencies while making a movie that feels like it could have been made by anybody. It is, in my view, his most accessible work for someone who either doesn't know or enjoy his style. Unfortunately -- even for me, who does not much care for Tarantino-isms -- this disconnect also made me feel the movie was severely lacking in any style at all.

In what attempts to be a sweeping series of interrelated character studies, Hollywood works best in its few moments of novelty. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt deliver stunning performances as a fictional star/stunt double navigating the changing screen cultures of 1969. As Rick Dalton (Leo) attempts to land solid jobs to reclaim some of his former glory, his double Cliff Booth (Brad) assists him as something between partner, friend, and personal assistant. There's not much plot here, but the series of vignettes are mostly charming.

While the film mostly works through its evocation of nostalgia (that is, nostalgia for a mostly white male-dominated industry) and its showbiz jokes about the inner workings of classic Hollywood, it also plays with convention by using fictional characters to interact and comment upon historical figures. It is here where my ambivalence toward the film begins. Certain characters are painted broadly -- even offensively -- such as the caricature of Bruce Lee, and it's funny in the moment but it's hardly realistic. Which forces the question as to what exactly Tarantino is doing. The timestamped details are so specific, while the fictionalized elements are bizarrely stretched if not totally disconnected from reality. Why? (I should add that Lee's characterization could easily be added to the list of racist tendencies in Tarantino's filmography, along with the dry slurs against Mexicans that pop up in this flick).

Perhaps the answer lies in the titular suggestion of a fairytale, and in the film's finale, which further emphasizes the laughably false nature of this story. Tarantino is no stranger to rewriting history, and so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. But something about the ending rang hollow to me, as the Manson family would-be murderers approach Sharon Tate's house and get distracted by a drunken Leo. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for serial killers and cults, but I was kind of hoping for a bleak ending that recounted the crimes, much like they were depicted in the amazing NBC series Aquarius (which I will always hate NBC for cancelling early). Instead, we get a highly moralistic revision in which the family, declaring that they blame Hollywood for making them violent and insane, turn from the Polanski-Tate property and instead attack Rick Dalton's house. The violence they hoped to enact on celebrity is turned back on them in a brutal, hilarious twist ending, followed by a denouement in which the historical Tate murder victims invite Dalton over for drinks.

It's clever and interesting, I suppose. Just not my preference. As for the bulk of the film, Tarantino's typical writerly and directorial skills are fairly typical, if a bit watered down. Tonally and in terms of pacing, the whole picture feels very unlike his other work and more akin to a more traditional, polished, classic director. Then again, some of his -isms come into play here, along with a strange assortment of unusual crap, such as the long takes of Brad Pitt cruising around town. It's just weird. It's Tarantino. I don't understand him or his fans. His movies almost never do anything, much less mean anything; he uses them as a stylized system of ranting. He uses them almost as a form of indoctrination to his rabid fans, a very real and often vicious cult themselves.

Come to think on it, I'm surprised he didn't just do a straight-up Manson movie.

*Note: Not all the characters based in reality are caricatured or super fictionalized. I thought Margot Robbie's performance as Sharon Tate was fabulous, but that character is relegated to supporting cast My preferences would have been to dive into her story a bit more. But as I said earlier, I'm a sucker for the dark stuff. That, and any more focus on Tate would be to allow a woman some substance in a Tarantino movie (Jackie Brown aside), and we all know that won't happen. No, he's content to have his version of a leading lady admiring herself (playing a klutz, no less) on the silver screen. The only other consequential female characters are a child (played for laughs and to praise Leo) and a hippie (who offers to blow Brad, who uncharacteristically denies her and demands her age and ID).

High Life (2019)

Score: 5 / 5

Sensual and hypnotic, haunting in the best way, High Life is a masterwork of science fiction horror from writer/director Claire Denis. We're trapped on a spacecraft filled with convicted criminals, helmed by a mad scientist, on a suicide mission to investigate what happens in a black hole. If that isn't the most provocative setup in recent sci-fi history, I don't know what is.

Especially with this kind of aesthetic. For a film with such potentially plot-driven foundations, this movie ends up being more of a free-floating chamber piece about human nature on the brink of the abyss. They are literally hurtling toward annihilation -- though they don't all know it -- and what do they do in the meantime? They are forbidden from sexual activity with each other, though the mad scientist leading them (none other than a magnificent Juliette Binoche), obsessed with successful artificial insemination, harvests them regularly for bodily fluids. Similarly, they frequently use the "Fuckbox" on the ship to release their frustrated energies; the most notable scene, in my mind, is of Binoche herself riding a dildo chair in what may well be the most breathtaking and violent autosexual (if that's what we might call masturbation?) scene in cinematic history.

It's not all sex (though that's pretty much the main thrust, so to speak), as Robert Pattinson's protagonist demonstrates. His celibate character is the only one left (...SPOILER ALERT?), as we see at the beginning of this nonlinear movie, to care for a child named Willow. We find out later Willow is his own, but since this information comes from the mad scientist and her experiments, we can't entirely trust it. Pattinson delivers an exceptional performance here, narrating and driving the film in both its heady patches, and its more grounded scenes such as when he advises against us eating our own shit.

Speaking of which, if you want to place this film amidst other spiritual spacefaring movies, I'd place it along with Solaris and Gravity more than with The Martian. Its concern with bodily fluids seems taken from Prometheus while its final act focus on the black hole itself is more in line with Interstellar. But while High Life references its own genre, it is never less than extravagantly original. At once grounded and abstract, the film suggestively encourages us to consider these diverse characters and their bizarre situation as symbolic of themes a little closer to home.

I won't spend too much time talking about this movie because I still don't have wholly coherent thoughts about it. It's just beautiful and creepy and fascinating, and it's meant to be an experience more than an intellectual discussion. You're supposed to feel the movie as you go -- and, yes, use your brain to fill in the gaps -- and sensually appreciate its visceral power before you dissect anything. Inasmuch as you can truly dissect something as obtuse as a "Fuckbox".

Hail Satan? (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Favorite documentary of the year? Probably!

Hail Satan? is a work of illuminating proclamation, a masterful teaching tool of modern Satanism in America. Satanism as a religion takes about as many forms as Christianity -- practitioners may worship the self, fellow humanity, or a Luciferian deity -- but as an ideology seems to be fairly uniform. It's about rebellion and independence, about individual dignity and pluralistic harmony, about what it really means to be American. The problem with that is, in subverting governing or identifying labels, I don't think many Satanists would claim to be "American" or "patriots" because of an innate mistrust of mainstream politics.

This documentary works not by detailing the sordid history of Satanism or its practice -- though it does efficiently outline key points -- but rather by constantly contrasting it with its opponents. Satanism is, after all, by definition, reactionary to monotheism (and specifically Christianity) and the profound Christian privilege in U.S. culture, it is best depicted alongside that which created and oppresses it. Director Penny Lane develops a uniquely hilarious and chilling tone here, juxtaposing incredible images and sounds to shape a film that not only depicts Satanism but demonstrates it.

As a vehicle for this project, however, we follow primarily secular Satanists of the more recently founded Satanic Temple as they use the U.S. legal system to combat Christian privilege across the country. From fighting prayer in schools to religious monuments on public property, the organization takes issues to court usually fighting for inclusion rather than exclusion. The centerpiece of this film is the creation of a statue of Baphomet to stand beside Ten Commandments monuments in multiple cities. Of course their point is simply to remove religion from public functions, but they do so by arguing for Satanic rites in place alongside Christian ones. Rather than acceding, allowing Satan into their spaces, their opponents are all but forced to relinquish their own monopoly. It's a brilliant technique to behold, and a powerful example of justice meted out properly.

This film may not convince you of the Satanic cause -- it certainly doesn't act as a treatise -- and it won't teach you all you may want to know, but it will make you laugh, gasp, and think for a long time afterward. It will invariably be a useful tool for those of us seeking to destabilize the dangerous and deadly union of church and state in Trump's America.

Little Woods (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

Nia DaCosta's debut is a masterwork of what we might call frontier filmmaking. Though at times Little Woods feels like a graduate thesis, I don't mean that disparagingly. This is a deeply emotional, surprisingly timely tale of sisterhood in an environment utterly hostile to female existence. It reads not unlike a chamber piece in the American northwest, with taut drama and simple thrills carrying us along at a slow but steady pace.

Tessa Thompson takes a masterful turn as Ollie, on probation after being caught illegally crossing the U.S./Canada border; eventually we learn she was probably running drugs, as this opportunity again presents itself to her. As she begins "breaking bad", we might say, we see the intense factors that have influenced her decision and the cruelty of being a lone woman in a man's harsh world. She works odd jobs for local construction men until her sister Deb (Lily James in a no less skilled performance) announces her pregnancy. Ollie and Deb have been estranged-ish since their mother died, and Deb already has a son she can scarcely provide for.

The women face homelessness and destitution from multiple sides. Deb learns how expensive it will be to have a child and so chooses to abort it; the only legal clinic is hundreds of miles away. When she shows up for her illegal operation, the predatory men attack her. Ollie, meanwhile, is threatened by a local drug dealer angry that she's operating on his turf; he demands 30% of her profits or she will need to run drugs across the border for him. As is so often the case in these kinds of stories, circumstances become dire enough that Ollie is forced to work for him again and perform the run.

What is magnificently different about this story, though, -- SPOILER ALERT -- is it's shockingly happy ending. Things get almost unbearably bleak during the movie, and it's hard to imagine this ending well for anyone involved. But Deb escapes her predators and has a safe and legal operation in Canada, Ollie successfully runs the drugs without getting them caught, Ollie learns that she's landed a promising job in Spokane, and the sisters reconcile. The final haunting image of them crossing safely back into the U.S. is incredibly hopeful even as it speaks, ironically, to the border crisis at our southern border with Mexico. Little Woods is a rare gem that uses the structure of well-worn plot but flips it upside-down and repurposes it for a completely novel story that hits a little too close to home.

Fast Color (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

In a future world covered in deserts where water is a rare commodity, you might find someone like Mel Gibson in leather or Clint Eastwood slinging guns. Or you might find Gugu Mbatha-raw in this charming little movie that plays like an antidote for the big-budget plot-driven sci-fi superhero flicks of our era. This is an American Midwest story that operates as a chamber piece about the women in a small family, a feminist Black folktale in the form of arthouse indie cinema.

Mbatha-raw plays Ruth, a lone vagrant in the desert wastes prone to seizures. Unfortunately, her seizures seem to cause earthquakes, a phenomenon that has caught the attention of scientists (and maybe the government) who seek to capture and study her. After a narrow escape, Ruth returns to her home, now occupied by her mother Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney). These two women share telekinetic powers: they can dissolve and reassemble material objects, and can see a mysterious spectrum of light they call "the colors." Lila has never met her mother, and so the two begin their relationship on timid ground, while Bo and Ruth seem to have some unresolved history.

We learn along with Lila that Ruth once had the same powers as her mother, but they have long since been neglected. The suggestion is that some trauma -- or, perhaps, the normalized trauma enacted on black women in America -- caused Ruth to suppress her abilities, which then manifested as the disastrous seizures we have witnessed. Bo and Lila work with Ruth to make peace with herself, but their idyll is broken when the scientist returns. Eventually, Ruth realizes her potential, breaking the drought and, enabled by the sacrifice of her mother, fleeing with her daughter to a safe haven.

Does it all sound a bit weird? It is, but in the best way. Major elements here are laughably bizarre, including Ruth's unexplained control over nature (earthquakes, the drought) and the exact nature of these titular colors we occasionally see but seem to have no concrete significance. And that ending: sure, it's heartbreaking when Bo gives herself up to be studied by the white scientist, but then to have Ruth flee with Lila for a safe haven in...Rome? What?

But there is no denying that these elements mean something to director and writer Julia Hart, whose vision here is myth-making gold. Not unlike the confidence David Lowery has in folktale-craft, Hart here keeps everything at a slow and steady pace, letting us soak in the scenery, details, and characters in peace. And all that's to say nothing of Mbatha-raw's performance, which deftly straddles wry humor and genuine heart, or Toussaint, whose Bo is a creature of rare beauty and grace. And while the performances and aesthetic are entrancing, it's no less brilliant of the film to force its audience to do some work along the way: filling in blanks and allowing the strangeness of Fast Color to charm us.