There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

What an utterly delightful surprise. Netflix dropped this teen slasher pretty unceremoniously this month, but it deserves to be talked about more. It's nothing new, even a cursory glance at its synopsis says as much. After several students at a small town high school are gruesomely murdered, a close group of misfits band together to figure out whodunnit. What's fun about this one is its embrace of pop culture and humor, much in the vein of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's Scream. Aware of their place not just in horror but in 2021, writer Henry Gayden (Shazam!) and director Patrick Brice (Creep) work hard to fit a lot of groan-inducing dialogue into what would otherwise be predictable, typical scenes, and the result is a fresh and fun new entry in the slasher-comedy subgenre.

Its opening scene is a brilliant enough case study. Football player Jackson comes home from school to take a nap before the big game tonight. He's talking to another player, and the two discuss crudely how best to relax before the game; Jackson wants to sleep, his friend intends to masturbate. One almost expects a "no homo" comment before they hang up because it's just that kind of movie. The camera zooms in on a little egg timer clicking down from an hour in the conspicuously empty kitchen. When Jackson awakes from his nap, it's already dark; why didn't his alarm go off? And why is the egg timer now on his bedside table? Ignoring the signs, he grabs his bag and runs to the front door, which is wide open, and sees that his truck is gone. Knowing now that something is horribly awry, he jumps back inside and locks the door before -- BAM -- the title flashes on the screen in gaudy yellow as synthesizer music blares. Thanks largely to John Carpenter and his contemporaries, it's an immediate homage to the '80s, even if this particular story is happening in 2021.

Other similar references lace almost every scene in There's Someone Inside Your House, so much that I wondered often if the film was too referential for its own good. Sometimes a lack of substance can be disguised when the style is thickly applied. Not so here, and I'd argue the movie uses those tropes as effective shorthand to mobilize its main messages. Which are, admittedly, hard to pinpoint. These teens have a lot of issues, and the killer knows it. Using 3D masks of each victim's face, the killer stalks, taunts, brutally murders, then displays. Each victim has secrets, including pill popping, bullying/hazing, bigotry, daddy issues, unrequited crushes; one of the joys of this movie is seeing how the "standard" rules of surviving slashers are toyed with. Because, as those of us who care about such things have noticed, the last five years or so of horror movies have increasingly and deliberately moved away from the formula Scream lambasted in 1996.

This movie takes the baton and continues running with it, featuring a remarkably diverse cast of relative unknown actors as a varied group of characters, including several people of color, a gay football star, and a non-binary young person. Most scenes take place in the school cafeteria or hallways, wherein lots of characters pop in and around to build exposition, in the speedy style of most high school comedies; here, however, their conversations are dripping with irony, constantly tapping in to "woke" language and meta-commentary on expectations or perceived standards about themselves. One iconic mean girl, reading from her college application essay, outs her classmate as nonbinary, vowing to respect "him, her, or them, depending you feel that day." Not long after, as a cop gives a press conference, he refers to catching the killer, "whoever he, she, or they may be," and while this reveals his awareness there could be multiple killers, it also smacks of a certain wokeness pervading the screenplay.

Without giving too much away, even the finale -- a really effective use of a Halloween corn maze and wildfires -- hinges on our understanding of "privilege" and how it can be used for pure evil. Once that particular mask is discarded, the movie unfortunately opens itself up to be read as an enterprise of tokenism and insincerity; the main characters are as shallowly written as their bigoted or conservative counterparts. But this genre isn't exactly known for deep characters or even much development, so it didn't bother me. Indeed, this movie jumps quickly amongst its large ensemble, giving each roughly the same amount of dramatic focus to keep everything moving. Someone's going to die within the next 15 minutes, so it's time to learn about their secrets first!

Mostly, they're all just there for the body count, and that's to be expected. Think of it not unlike Riverdale in movie form, where all the characters bicker and flirt before doing something dangerous or stupid, then bouncing back too quickly to discuss their next top suspect. It's so much fun! I mean, there's a reason Scream will be making a comeback this January, and it's that these movies can be so clever and funny even as they scare us. Or at least they scare me, because frankly someone hiding in my house with a knife is just about the scariest thing I can imagine. Granted, this movie only does that about twice, which makes me wonder why they employed this title. But, referential as it is to When a Stranger Calls and others, I'll accept it without further comment. So do yourself a favor, get a nice big glass of wine, and queue this up on Netflix. It's a wicked good time.

Halloween Kills (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Here it is. Perhaps my most-anticipated movie of the year, and it's killer. Literally. Halloween Kills takes its title and runs with it in graphic, gory glory. The original 1978 film scared the shit out of us (and still does), and in the years since, Michael Myers has become something of a joke. The closer he got to the camera, the less scary he seemed; the more people tried to explain him -- in the movies, as Laurie's brother, or about the movies, almost always psychosexually -- the less mysterious and potent his terror. When David Gordon Green rescued the franchise from Rob Zombie's flaccid grip, retconning all the other films but the first, we were all a little nervous. But Halloween (2018) allayed my anxieties in that respect, even as it tied my constitution into knots. And now, in the continuation of Green's planned trilogy, we get the bloodbath that is the middle installment.

Much like the previous film, this one features Green's amazing ability to at once channel John Carpenter and make his own, new product. While he felt a little shackled in the first, like he was working to re-introduce old fans to his new vision through homage after homage, here Green is breaking free and playing his own twisted game. The story picks up immediately after the first one ended, with Laurie's house in flames and Michael trapped in its basement. A group of firefighters hurries to the house -- ignoring Laurie's screams to "Let it burn!" -- and are subsequently slaughtered. It's an interesting pseudo-homage to My Bloody Valentine, much as the previous film did with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which suggests to me that Green is making consummate works of horror art with these flicks. One can only imagine with gleeful anticipation what he'll do with his upcoming Exorcist reboot.

But so begins this chapter, which sees the diabolic Michael yet again stalking the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night (actually, the clocks show that it is after midnight for most of this movie, but November First would be a terrible new title). Once Karen (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichak), Laurie's daughter and granddaughter, learn that he survived, they alert the hospital and go into lockdown, certain that he's coming for his original Final Girl (Jamie Lee Curtis, of course). I wondered how much of this movie would feel like a reboot of Halloween II, in which Michael indeed follows her and butchers all the night staff at the local medical center. Not so much here, but the lockdown sequence begins easily the most surprising and shocking -- and realistic -- turn of events in this movie. Panic. Utter chaos as people get up in arms, angry about the bloodshed and renewed horrors of their past. The pot proverbially boils over, and many people are hurt and even die without Michael so much as coming anywhere near the building.

That's because he's far too busy. Much will be made, critically, of Michael's titular kills, but I couldn't help feeling awe at his prowess. Other Halloween entries have been criticized for having lower body counts than other contemporary slasher films. Not so here, which I expect may very well have the highest body count of any slasher. I lost count around 17, and that was at least half an hour before the end of the film, which features yet another bloodbath. A few nasty shocks took place in the previous movie -- especially one scene in which Michael enters two or three houses in a row to stab away -- but this one really showcases his murderous creativity. This movie reminds us, much as Rogue One did with Darth Vader, that Michael isn't a joke; this movie makes him utterly terrifying as the most prolific (hmmm... anti-lific?) serial killer we've ever seen. Perhaps most disturbingly, this film takes its time with most of its deaths, showing the suffering victims as they gargle on pooling blood and struggle to take their last breaths; one scene in particular, involving an older interracial couple and a fluorescent light tube, forced me to look away from the screen for the first time in this franchise.

In a third focal point for this wide-ranging but remarkably coherent film, we get a fabulous re-introduction to legacy characters played by their original actors. A 48-ish-year-old Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), drinking at a bar in observance of 40 years of Michael's lockup, cheers with other survivors of that fateful night in 1978. We've got Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards), and even Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, who was not in the original film although the bullying character was) whose son is dating Allyson. Even Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), the former sheriff whose daughter Annie was murdered by Michael, returns to wearily and warily oversee the events of this Halloween anniversary. Once they hear about the firefighter massacre, they drunkenly get up in arms and rally together a mob to hunt down Michael Myers once and for all. In their journey across town, they stop at the hospital and police station where Tommy whips them into a furious frenzy. Monsters beget monsters, you might say, and Tommy is pretty terrifying in these scenes as he begins the (admittedly campy) "Evil dies tonight" chants.

Surprisingly, Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton) survived his attack by the evil psychiatrist in the previous movie, but that's about the only good news here. We're finally given some much-needed backstory on him in a brilliant and beautiful flashback scene right away in this movie: transporting us visually and stylistically to Carpenter's masterpiece, Green shows us a young Hawkins chasing Michael after he disappeared from the Doyle lawn at the end of the '78 film. His own trauma stems from this scene, which puts him in bed thematically with Laurie and the others; their present-day scenes together in the hospital suggest their romantic past as well, which may have blessed them with a daughter, Karen, whose badassery almost steals this movie as well as the previous one.

Green's endgame here is still unknown, and frankly its mystery has compounded exponentially. Very few questions are answered in this film, and it deliberately sets up a lot more. Without spoiling the finale of Halloween Kills, after which very few characters seem to be still alive, we have to wonder what will happen in next year's Halloween Ends. Moreover, the mythos of Michael Myers himself is now under the most scrutiny I think it's ever endured. Those answers will come -- or not -- in time, but what remains is easily one of the most nihilistic and downright cruel slashers I've ever seen. Much as Green knows the franchise has survived off audience cheering each new murder, here he dares us to do so; in fact, he seems intent on forcing us to eat the cake we so often demand from this genre. "You want more blood?" he seems to ask; "here it is, and all the pain that comes with it." Much as the mob created to kill Michael has trouble facing its own violence, Green seems to turn the camera on us in the final sequence, asking what exactly we want in the final chapter of this franchise, and if we have the courage to stomach it.

Lamb (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

One of the strangest movies this year, Lamb is finally out in what seems to be a limited release. The Icelandic entry for the Oscar race this year, it showcases the remarkable skills of veteran actress Noomi Rapace (The Millennium series, The Drop, Prometheus, Child 44) and those of debuting director Valdimar Johannsson. Johannsson's work here feels like someone who just graduated film school and got a sizable budget right away; that's not a bad thing, but it often feels like a student film in its measured pace and bizarre premise. Its weighty themes, too, of parenthood, loss, and family ties pale in comparison with its downright ballsy exploration of nature vs. nurture in child-rearing. I see these elements all as compliments. It's a fascinating movie, and will surely be studied closely in the coming months.

Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) and Maria (Rapace) are a young-ish couple working on their remote farm in Iceland. Partners in all aspects, they share the necessary work to keep things running with almost no words passed between them. They deliver lambs, plow fields, brand sheep, fix tractors in stony silence; we almost never even see them smile or glance at each other. Their muscular drudgery might be guarding something, but it's not clear what: perhaps a loveless marriage, or some unspoken and unseen loss? We hear Christmas music on their radio -- the only obvious link the couple has to any entertainment in their solitude -- but this is not a festive household. When one of their ewes gives birth to an unusual lamb, however, things start to change. We don't see the newborn for quite a while, and so we're not quite sure why this one is different. Perhaps it's a little deformed, maybe an ugly duckling kind of situation, and so Maria brings it into their house to care for. Maybe this couple will come back together while caring for new life, a blessing in sheep's wool, so to speak. How lovely.

At least, that might be the primary theme, if not for the opening scene, which puts us seemingly in the perspective of a mysterious entity, huffing animalistically as it stalks a herd of horses in a cold field. Once they flee, it turns to Maria and Ingvar's sheep-filled barn and enters. We don't see it, but we can tell the other sheep are nervous around it. At one point, a sheep with wild eyes slowly stumbles out of its pen and collapses on the wooden ground; the camera cuts to a close-up of its belly, implying that it might be pregnant, though that bit was a little lost on me. Could our POV character be a monster that rapes sheep? Sure, why not? And...is it still hiding out in the barn?

Now, I don't really want to spoil things here. If you've seen the trailer, you know what the child is, more or less. Attempting to describe her is a bit futile, and much more so because of the pains by which Johannsson goes to slowly reveal her oddness to his audience. To identify her would only cheapen the effect; I would guess that seeing this movie with absolutely no foreknowledge would be best, if you're willing to get on its weird frequency. It's shocking but also funny -- as indicated by no small amount of deadpan comedy in this film -- despite my intense efforts to stifle any chuckling or uncomfortable guffaws. But that's not to say it's all absurdist humor, because almost none of it is. Instead, Johannsson wisely -- and with brave commitment -- plays it for heartwarming family drama. Maria and Ingvar sweetly adopt Ada, their new ward, as if she were their own.

Seeing their familial efforts is really lovely, and makes a strong case for parental nurturing as the formative developmental vehicle. Nature can only do so much, the film suggests, and often messes up; a loving family can do so much more. Even when Uncle Petur shows up, his initial bewilderment and horror transforms into -- well, let's just say that dynamic shift is very sweet to witness. Less sweet is the extent to which these now-happy people will go to protect their newfound bliss. You might say that Maria in particular wants to have her lamb and eat it too; the film's first scene of real violence, enacted fully within the frame, is utterly horrific. With this in mind, I suddenly wonder, too: Could there be a macro-theme of humanity attempting to dominate nature to maintain its greedy status quo? Maybe, but is there enough evidence for that? It would be a dangerous stretch.

All that said, throughout most of its run time, Lamb curiously feels like it knows a little too well the A24 methodology. Actually, more than once, I caught myself drifting a bit and wondering if this film was meant to be a sort of parody of earlier, now "classic" A24 films. It feels a little too pretentious, especially in context of its subject matter and grotesque title character. Its lugubrious pace notwithstanding, it takes as its defining aesthetic focus not the barn or flock, not the lonely house or its sad inhabitants, nor even of whatever supernatural events are going on in this farm. Rather, it relies almost solely on beautiful wide shots of mountainous landscape to convey -- well, what, exactly? Unlike the repeated landscape shots of Ex Machina, for example, which seem to counterpoint Romantic notions of humanity and whatever "god" humans will face in or from the titular machine, the landscapes here only serve, in my mind, to hammer home the isolation of this young family. Which we get loud and clear in the opening sequence.

Its daylit but dreary atmosphere was effective in making me feel cool and damp, too, though it offered almost none of the chills of broad daylight in Midsommar nor the icy terror of The Witch. Moreover, its creepily nihilistic ending reminded me a fair bit of The Dark and the Wicked, compounded with the farm setting and theme of family undoing, though Lamb doesn't come anywhere close to matching that devilish experience in terms of unadulterated horror. So where does that leave us? I suppose with a unique enough experience that fits oddly with family-invader and/or child tragedy dramas like Birth or Rabbit Hole, but where those focus on the psychological and emotional strain on bereaved parents, this movie conspicuously avoids humanizing or complicating any of the characters except Ada. The closest it comes is an uncomfortable forced rivalry between the brothers for Ingvar's wife, which she deftly handles on her own. One has to wonder why there is such shallowness, and that's a question for which I have few possible answers, and no satisfying ones.

The Last Duel (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

God bless Ridley Scott. It's been several years since I've seen a medieval epic like this, a genre in which Scott himself has made several top titles. One of the oldest directors still working, he continues to be one of the most prolific, releasing what will surely be two major awards contenders this holiday season. The first is The Last Duel, a constantly thrilling war movie and courtroom drama hybrid that takes place in France, during a cold winter in the late 1300s. A power struggle between two egocentric men -- each the "haves" of their society -- results in the rape of a woman; this, in turn, becomes popularized as the final legally sanctioned duel (read: public spectacle overseen by the king) in France. More than its expertly controlled action and drama, however, the film deftly handles weighty and timely themes of masculinity and misogyny, capitalism/feudalism, religious piety, wartime duty and marital duty, motherhood and dignity, and the hollow honors of duty and loyalty (in many ways, not unlike the magnificent The Green Knight released earlier this year). 

Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (in their first writing collaboration, I think, since Good Will Hunting) and Nicole Holofcener, The Last Duel begins with the charge of rape and the men preparing to duel each other. We then are presented with roughly the story of How They Got There, told three times in chapters entitled "The Truth According to _____." First, it's the story of Sir Jean de Carrouges (Damon), a proud and violent knight desperate to improve his standing with the bitchy Count over him (Affleck) and the Count's cousin, King Charles VI (Alex Lawther). de Carrouge takes as wife the young Marguerite (Jodie Comer), whose father includes as dowry enough land and money to potentially save the knight's fortunes. When the Count prefers the company of de Carrouge's squire, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and gifts him with the land de Carrouge wanted, his fiery temper overcomes him and the knight and squire feud. Things come to a violent head when Marguerite accuses Le Gris of raping her.

Second comes the truth according to Le Gris. Often, we see scenes repeated with notable differences. Did de Carrouges save Le Gris on the battlefield at Limoges, or was it the other way around? Did Marguerite flirt with Le Gris at a banquet, or is she completely devoted to her husband? Is Jean a whining, whinging whelp desperate for honor and violent in bed, or the lordly, chivalric husband of any woman's dreams? Is Le Gris a socially climbing greaseball determined to win land and funds above his grade, or is he a good squire who constantly shields and protects his knight and thus deserves the woman he claims to love? It is in this chapter that we finally learn Marguerite's rape did, in fact, happen, and we are forced to watch Le Gris convince himself that she's enjoying his crime. When he confesses to his priest, it's to adultery, not rape; later, a cleric advises his defense, saying that rape is not a crime against a woman, but against her male guardian, as a matter of violating property.

Finally, we're treated to Marguerite's truth, or as the chapter title graphics indicate by remaining onscreen longer, "the truth." Now we finally see both Jean and Jacques as the chauvinist brutes they really are and the lies they've told themselves to justify their behavior. Jean, though arguably noble in finally sticking up for his wife, previously could not provide for her and gave no care to her well-being despite her hard work to keep his finances and land operating; he haggled over her price (dowry) with her father and dutifully shoves his penis into her prostrate body nightly in the hopes of a male heir. Jacques, to whom Marguerite gave almost no attention, is convinced she is in a loveless marriage and would be a ripe tool to use against his perceived rival to gain favor with the Count and King. Ultimately, and rightly, it is through her eyes that we see the final duel, men battling each other for honor while her life -- and the life of her newborn baby -- hangs in the balance.

The duel itself finally comes at the film's climax, and it is nothing short of breathtaking. But so is the rest of the movie, from its impeccably researched and recreated production design to its brilliant screenplay. The film's editor works hard to parallel certain scenes two or three times, filmed almost identically, with the performers changing the narrative each time. Did Marguerite coyly slip off her shoes before running up to her bedroom, or did they fly off as she stumbled in her retreat? Did Le Gris detect a note of lust when she greeted him with a kiss, or was she performing the wifely duty her husband demanded of her to his friend? Is de Carrouge's mother a matronly and wise woman, or a bitter old witch determined to have her son to herself?

The performers are all utterly brilliant in what was certainly a grueling shoot. Thankfully, they keep things grounded despite potential hang-ups: they all use a vague mid-Atlantic accent that is often Americanized British or outright American English and the screenplay is quite modern despite a few basic syntactical devices that make it sound mildly archaic. Never fear, there's no Shakespeare here! Or even Baudelaire, though perhaps some attempt at a mild French accent would have been preferable? Regardless, the movie deserves a lot of praise for its many elements, and it'll probably make its way onto my list of favorites for the year if only for its beautiful and haunting vision. The barbarism of medieval gender politics feels far too relevant, and the film's grayscale grittiness brings a dark level of urgency to the story that I did not expect. All hail Ridley Scott, and on to House of Gucci!

The Guilty (2021)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

Typical of Hitchcockian fare, The Guilty operates as a man-on-the-phone thriller that hinges on his own reliability as a protagonist. Joe Baylor was an officer in the LAPD before an event disgraced him, demoted him to a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and now has him set to go to court. The event apparently involved no small amount of controversy, and so he furtively looks around the call center and avoids the gaze of others. He regularly uses his inhaler -- too often, in fact; one wonders if it's his stress level, or if he was already asthmatic and the raging wildfires are exacerbating his condition. Indeed, his workplace features a large wall of televisions tuned in to ongoing news reports of an inferno encroaching on Los Angeles. Among his regular calls, he must shut down the attempts of reporters sneakily trying to get his inside scoop. And then there are the calls he makes to his estranged family, trying to say a simple "good night" to his young daughter.

He's clearly not handling the stress well, and as played by Jake Gyllenhaal, the character clearly has some issues with anger management, bedside manner, and snap judgments. His short temper leads him to argue with a panicked caller who has apparently been robbed by a prostitute in one of the film's few comedic moments. Another time, more cruelly, he criticizes a caller for substance abuse; scenes like these stand in stark contrast to the main plot: he gets a call from a terrified woman (Riley Keough) who he surmises has been abducted. He quickly learns that she has a six-year-old daughter who may be in danger, too. Immediately (and alarmingly) invested in the case, he tries to operate as both a responding officer and a dispatcher, jumping from phone line to phone line to corral the necessary units. In the hands of Gyllenhaal, it's a master class in acting from the most consistently unpredictable and excellent actors working today.

But, in the hands of writer Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) and director Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven, Southpaw, King Arthur), the film's tone and themes vacillate wildly. What starts as a character-based thriller becomes an oddly unwieldy radio play of voices and ideas that reverberate without really sticking. Joe's rash responses -- including swearing to help Emily and her daughter without having enough information -- reveal the film's dubious critique of toxic white maleness in the American police system. His ignorant bravado and possessive masculinity cause serious problems and result in further violence, but the film's constant attempts to elicit our sympathy through Joe's well-meaning demeanor undermine the critique. I suppose we could be grateful this didn't lean into any discussions about Defunding the Police; instead, we get a watered-down survey of concepts relating to hegemonic cops in disgrace.

This movie's waste of potential themes notwithstanding, it's a wildly entertaining time because of Fuqua's focus on his greatest asset. Gyllenhaal is in almost every scene and still steals the movie, committing his every breath to conveying the inner (and often outer) turmoil of his character. His operatic finale rang a little melodramatic to me, but that's pretty standard for Fuqua's flicks. The movie occasionally overemploys typical thriller devices to ramp up the tension, like the approximate GPS he uses to track callers or the hellish flames projected from the rear wall of the office. And so, all in all, it's a reasonably good time at the movies if you want to rest your artistic intelligence and let the mellow side of darker thrillers carry you along.

No Time to Die (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

One of the first movies to be shelved after the pandemic shut everything down in early 2020, the latest Bond movie is finally on the glorious silver screen. It's also the final outing of Daniel Craig as 007. I'm not, strictly speaking, a fan of the whole James Bond thing, but I've found Craig's tenure as the character to have borne five excellent films, each of which has made me rethink my general disinterest toward the franchise. And this one is a fabulous way to end it, though it does require that viewers have seen at least the previous film to make much sense. Actually, really, it's a culmination of all the previous ones; when Casino Royale exploded onto our screens in 2006, it revitalized a franchise for younger generations who needed action and a different kind of sex appeal. While even these movies didn't add anything new to spy thrillers generally, they carved out a nice niche of intergenerational interest and wrote the most interesting chapter yet in the saga of one of the oldest franchises around.

The twenty-fifth Bond film (isn't that wild?), entitled No Time to Die and featuring a haunting song of the same name by Billie Eilish, takes its beautifully paced time to set up the finale of Craig's iteration of James Bond. Beginning with a flashback that gives us some re-introduction to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the film seems to center her as Bond's romantic endgame. We then cut quickly to present-day Italy, where James and Madeleine are vacationing; he briefly departs to visit the grave of his original love interest, Vesper Lynd, before coming under attack by Spectre agents. It's a thrilling opening sequence, with an extended chase and shoot-out in gorgeous Matera. Suspecting Madeleine of treachery, he sends her tearfully away, and then begins the mournful theme song.

See, I told you it requires viewing other installments. Specifically Spectre, although it's helpful to have a working knowledge of the others, too.

Bond goes off the grid into an early retirement of isolation in Jamaica, and lives there (or at least ends up there) for apparently five years. But when a bioweapon called Project Heracles -- a virus mobilized by nanobots that can be programmed to only attack certain DNA -- is stolen by terrorists, Bond is approached twice in the same day for help. First by his friend, CIA agent Felix (Jeffrey Wright) and a new guy named Logan (Billy Magnussen), then by his MI6 replacement, the new 007 named Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Bond's distrust of M (Ralph Fiennes) and his obvious secret knowledge about the new threat pushes him to team up with the Americans. It helps that Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) are still on Bond's side and help out a lot.

The film's gorgeous cinematography by Linus Sandgren (First Man, La La Land, Battle of the Sexes) paints a beautiful canvas for all these players to thrive, and for the most part director Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective, 2011's Jane Eyre, Beasts of No Nation) lets each player shine in their solo scenes. Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie takes place when the team infiltrates a Spectre meeting in Cuba, a birthday celebration for Bond's incarcerated arch-nemesis Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). Bond teams up with Paloma (Ana de Armas), a CIA agent, to find the scientist who developed the virus. Her energy and style steals the entire movie, despite her extremely limited screen time, which can't have been more than 15 or 20 minutes. Also of note, Nomi is a wonderful new character, but her role as, simply, the new 007 is quite limiting; I fear that the producers and writers used her to experiment on audiences to see if people would accept a Black woman as "Bond," and now I fear that the character's un-dynamic role in this film might prevent them from experimenting any further. It feels more like lip service and fan service than about any artistic integrity. But, then, we are still talking about another James Bond movie.

Other problems I had with this one? Well, first and foremost, I was sorely disappointed by the villain. Blofeld finally meets his end, but it's a pretty miserable one that felt unsatisfying. But Rami Malek's new character (I can't remember how it's spelled, but it sounds like "Lucifer") is almost pathetic, not even really showing up until after the halfway point and then hardly doing anything afterward. He monologues through a thick accent and menaces a child and vaguely wants to destroy the world and he just feels like any other Bond villain ever. Javier Bardem's terrifying Raoul Silva in Skyfall was the exception, and Craig deserved a better villain for his final outing. Then again, perhaps Craig's self-tortured take on the character might have been such that Bond himself is ultimately his own bad guy, and in this movie the climax certainly forces him to come to terms with his own willingness to fulfill a mission and also live a happy life. My other problem with this movie is the same as with Spectre in that I don't like watching Seydoux; she is utterly vapid on screen and has no chemistry with Craig (or anyone else) at all.

My own complaints included, No Time to Die is a really good time at the movies and fittingly ends this series on a solid note. I look forward to future viewings of the five Craig 007s because each has some really fascinating and fabulous choices, even for someone like me, who had never seen a Bond movie before Casino Royale and now, frankly, doesn't feel a need to see any others. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Other than Milk and The Walk, I'm not sure how many other feature films are made as adaptations of documentary films. This one is a biopic of its titular character, the famed televangelist and evangelical celebrity Tammy Faye Messner, mostly during her early years in the biz as Tammy Faye Bakker. The film chronicles her youthful energy and courtship with Jim Bakker before launching us into the highlights of their stardom. We witness their founding of the PTL Club and their work towards a Christian entertainment empire, complete with a theme park. But as they are slowly corrupted by the wealth around them, their relationship fractures and their life work begins to crumble. As the good book says, the love of money.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is aptly named, because despite the many narrative choices the film makes -- and could have made -- director Michael Showalter (Hello, My Name is Doris, The Big Sick, The Lovebirds) and, to a lesser extent, screenwriter Abe Sylvia, keep everything tight on its protagonist. Despite the film's narrative hang-ups and what I expect will be a staunch confusion by some as to why this story needed to be told again, once it got rolling, Chastain's performance more than makes up for any doubts I had. Her chameleonic performance, helped by stunning makeup and hair destined for awards nominations, feels ripped from my memories of seeing PTL Club crap on tv as a kid. More than once I had to look closer at the screen to see if the film was using stock footage or if it was really Chastain peering out from those gaudy lashes. Vocally, she performs in a completely different register, which must have been the result of some brutal vocal coaching and strenuous care routines; the only comparison I can make to it is that of Gillian Anderson in the National Theatre Live production of A Streetcar Named Desire. If she isn't nominated for an Oscar, it'll be a crime.

Speaking of which, Andrew Garfield plays her fraudster husband Jim Bakker with remarkably sturdy support. It is never easy to perform opposite someone so spectacular -- and I do mean, partly, someone who plays a spectacle -- but, like Hugh Grant in Florence Foster Jenkins, Garfield holds his own and sometimes steals focus as the soft-spoken, round-chinned father of capitalist televangelism. The film repeatedly suggests his indiscretions and crimes, but largely combines them into an amalgamated sense of fraud: fraud in business, fraud in love, fraud in faith. His moral bankruptcy and brilliant portrayal of, essentially, a flaccid firebrand, makes him a sort of comedic straight man next to what is almost surely a whitewashed portrayal of Tammy. She often appears to be oblivious to the realities that support her, despite the film's attempts to lionize her: she's outspoken and strident, from her early scenes in college classes to her brazen act as a new mother to claim her spot at the big boys' table of business (including the irritated and evil pseudo-villain of the story, Jerry Falwell, played by Vincent D'Onofrio). 

It's an interesting way to present her, and it will undoubtedly ring hollow to some viewers. Even I, more than once, guffawed at what I read as the film's heavy-handed emotional manipulations to get me to identify with Tammy. Decorated not unlike Dolly Parton, she is referred to at least once in the film as looking like a clown, a descriptor made more apt when she is asked to sing on television in her bedazzled or glitzy outfits. We see, with her, hints that her husband is unfaithful and leaning in to the other evangelicals' sexist conceits. She believes fervently in her own causes and in her own inner light, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the film's recreation of her famed interview with AIDS-infected pastor Steve Pieters on live television. The scene's undeniable strength, harnessed seemingly effortlessly by Chastain, left this viewer in tears partly due to the performances and partly because I remember the hatred and vitriol people felt toward her as a result. None of the men around her have her warm, beating heart, the movie seems to say, and that's why they all failed where she persisted.

Then again, the movie does very little to give additional insight into Tammy's inner life. Chastain's incredible work at delivering the character to us afresh notwithstanding, the rest of the film feels very much like the documentary, with some added melodrama. There's no insight into exactly why Tammy so obsessed over her grotesque appearance, or the prep she underwent to appear and perform on tv. She gets a little bit of personal revelation during a couple scenes as she flirts with one of her musical collaborators, which results in a taut, emotionally violent confrontation with her husband and PTL directors. And, most disappointingly for me, the film does almost nothing with what I gauged to be its potential themes: the exact nature of her (or anyone's) faith is left opaque, and any journey of social or religious development is vaguely tied up with basic nods, in the end, to her perseverance and purity of heart. Which, again, feels a little too cleanly cut to me; I'm fine with celebrating the good things she did in life, because she definitely helped some people, but "just wanting to love people" puts people on a slippery slope and isn't enough for character veneration in 2021.

You can only really hold a movie up for what it is, though, rather than what you wanted. And as a vision of the past shockingly realized in the present, it's a dazzling movie. Come for Chastain, stay for Chastain, and be entertained all along the way.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

My prayers from the original Venom came true. In another fabulous outing for the dark side of Marvel, one of our favorite antiheroes returns with kinetic panache, this time causing trouble with a favorite villain. Let There Be Carnage isn't a subtle movie, and for people long tired of CGI-laden superhero blockbusters, it will be read as messy and trite. But, much like the first one, this sequel works best for fans who can get on its funky wavelength for long enough to realize they're in for a fun, weird time. As long as they don't mind a heavy dose of soft-core gooey, amoebic tentacle porn.

This movie takes place about a year after the first one, but plot isn't really on its mind; the characters seem to be about where they were when last we saw them. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is living an apparently happy life with his new partner, the alien Symbiote named Venom (also Hardy). They act together as a sort of vigilante, apparently, bullying bullies on the streets of San Francisco. We don't see much of this behavior, though, because the movie dives right into Eddie's new work: interviewing incarcerated serial killers. Having discovered the cache of corpses left by one Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), Eddie's career leaps forward; much to his chagrin, his ex, Anne (Michelle Williams), is now engaged to another man.

Yes, that's right, Venom is indeed a love story. But not so much between Eddie and Anne as it is between Eddie and Venom. Less parasite-host drama and more buddy comedy with cannibalism on its mind, this franchise hinges on its two leads bickering and squabbling and breaking apart before happily (and usually sensually) reuniting to kick ass. We know this already, and so this sequel just gives us a lot of what we want in that vein. Venom is Eddie's id, and thus all of ours, constantly hungry (his diet of live chickens just isn't satiating) and a little bit horny; he's a good wingman to his host, though, and occasionally urges Eddie to do the right thing, like reconnect with Anne. It's still a wonderfully queer dynamic here, maybe even a little more explicitly than in the first outing, but it reaches a new height when the villain appears. Thankfully, this movie, directed by Andy Serkis, is all too happy to dive into the weird stuff too.

Kasady, sentenced for death, attacks Eddie and bites a chunk right out of him, Hannibal style. The Symbiote piece that he takes merges with him to become Carnage, a "red one" as Venom calls it, an unholy combination of bloodlust and psychopathy. It doesn't take long for him to start his murderous and destructive spree, and so the movie zips right along; between its action, thick CGI, and delightfully morbid humor, there's barely a moment to breathe. Kasady gets some backstory -- the opening sequence reveals a bit of his sad past -- and even a romantic relationship a la Joker and Harley Quinn with Naomie Harris's new character Shriek (basically the X-Men's Banshee, but a criminal). But, most tellingly for his character, the film does not give us a single moment of Kasady discovering his powers or testing his limits. Perhaps Carnage is so powerful and dangerous because Kasady and the Symbiote are already too much alike.

Venom isn't a typical comic book movie about alternate universes and worlds ending, and its focus on a single interesting character grappling with his demons is almost refreshing. The cinematography (this time by the amazing Robert Richardson) is beautiful like last time (by a personal favorite, Matthew Libatique), though here most frames actually feel like they could be panels in a comic book; whereas the first Venom leaned into its dark, edgy aesthetic a bit more in terms of framing and lighting, this one more fully embraces the violent silliness and colorful iconography of the material. And the writing, this time involving Hardy, gives its monstrous protagonist multiple scenes of sensitive, almost sweet reflection. Who knew Venom could be such a gentle soul?

Well, up to a point. And the same goes for this movie, which ends with the most jaw-dropping moment I've had in a cinema in years. Stick around for the mid-credits scene, which (SPOILER ALERT) connects the Sony/Marvel series to the Disney/Marvel Studios (MCU) franchise. Obviously this will link the two franchises -- presumably so that Tom Holland, soon to be out of contract with Disney, is free to continue the character in new ways -- but we don't know exactly how yet. Will Holland jump over to the Sony side and leave the Avengers permanently? Could this scene be an indication that Sony will sell their rights over to Disney? The final Spider-Man MCU outing could reveal more, or it could muddy the waters for those of us eager for Sinister Six content. At least we know now that both studios are leaning in on the multiverse concept, so we can expect more surprises moving forward.

Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the most troubling musicals ever produced -- after, what, maybe Carousel? -- Dear Evan Hansen has finally made it to the silver screen. As such, it's finally reaching a much wider audience than simply those of us who had listened to the soundtrack for the last four years or so. Of course, with each new project by composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman, La La Land, Aladdin), their fanbase has grown. But seeing the famed musical from top to bottom reveals that it's distinctly darker than their other works, and its story by Steven Levenson (Fosse/Verdon, the upcoming tick, tick...Boom!) is really, truly problematic. And not simply in the "that didn't age well" kind of cynically postmodern way; it grapples with intense and urgent issues before coming to a conclusion that, well, feels deeply unsatisfying. As the ending attempts to assuage any complicit guilt from the audience it also bravely faces the consequences of its own plot points. One has to wonder if the full presentation in such an accessible medium has influenced its less than warm critical and popular reception.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. In case you didn't already know, the film starts by introducing us to the title character, Evan, who is about to head off to school despite his debilitating social anxiety. We learn immediately that his mother, working a lot to support the two of them, is struggling to connect with Evan, but exhorts him to follow his therapist's advice and write letters to himself with attainable goals and words of encouragement. He wears a cast on his left arm, broken after falling from a tree in flashbacks presented to us ad nauseam during the film, although it's not until very late that -- SPOILER ALERT -- we learn that particular episode was in fact a suicide attempt brought on by Evan's equally debilitating depression. That revelation is the final emotional climax in a movie filled with similar twists of the knife. In case you weren't getting the idea, this is not a razzle-dazzle romp through high school.

In fact, and this is where I take some issue with Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of the musical, the film seems almost intent on making everything really fucking depressing for us as well as for the characters. With the exceptions of the opening number ("Waving Through a Window," one of the best songs in musical theatre in the last decade) and the letter-writing number ("Sincerely Me"), every song is despondent and sentimental, sickly both in emotional weight and in tempo. My indignation was piqued in the first few minutes because, even though "Waving" is a great opening number, the film cuts one of my favorite -- and notably upbeat -- songs entirely: "Anybody Have a Map," sung by the two mother characters. Similarly, nearer the climax, the film cuts "Good for You," a biting -- and also upbeat -- number that propels three distinct character choices in the stage musical.

Instead of including these numbers to help the momentum of the film, Chbosky just slices them in favor of lengthy dialogue scenes that feel, if possible, more morose and melodramatic than the songs. Even the two new musical inclusions, "The Anonymous Ones" (co-written with Amandla Stenberg, the actress who sings it) and "A Little Closer" are really slow and sad, far more about internalized character study than externalized character (or plot) development. Sacrificing story is just not a great model for any musical, especially one that has a lot of story to tell. The languid pace does more than just make the movie a bit of a sluggish experience: because each song is designed to pull at your tear ducts, I spent far too much of this overlong movie crying silently into my facemask. But, by the end of it, I felt less like I had experienced catharsis and more like I had been emotionally gaslighted.

And that's because -- as you might have gleaned from my first paragraph -- the screenplay is really, really weird. It forces us almost immediately to identify and empathize with Evan, through what we see as his weaknesses or flaws or relatability. Then we learn that he's not actually a great kid, and that his impulses are troubling; though it's clear he gets guilted or otherwise awkwardly shoehorned into making some of his bad decisions, the lies flow a little too freely. It's not a simple "yes" when the truth is "no," it's elaborate yarn-spinning, fable-fabricating, and it happens more than once. Soon enough, as a local tragedy spins into a spectacle -- and we really do have to question the overly dramatic response of the other school kids and townsfolk, who apparently never reached out to help before the tragedy -- Evan, caught in his lies, adeptly navigates tumultuous emotions for incredibly selfish personal gain. The tragedy, in which a relative stranger to Evan named Connor kills himself, leads Evan into Connor's family's home and hearts, until he finally lays claim to Connor's sister Zoe, a girl for whom he has been pining in silence.

The performances of the cast are uniformly excellent -- despite the screenplay's attempted hamstringing of the mothers, Amy Adams and Julianne Moore, who both steal their scenes -- and Ben Platt's awkward teenager persona, brilliantly translated from stage to screen, belies his breathtakingly angelic voice. What's interesting, though, is that on the surface, atop his layers of transformative makeup, he's actually quite grotesque. In a movie filled with profoundly flawed, human characters that could just as easily step into a scene from This is Us, Evan is so calculated and caricatured on a purely visual level, and so accomplished vocally, that he feels like he's from a totally different world. Moreover, Evan's devious methodology reveals him to be what we might loosely consider an antihero; we want him to succeed even as he fully deserves any comeuppance heading his way. Evan plays along with the public charade, gaining fame, family, and love he apparently always wanted and never got. All because a stranger, a high schooler, killed himself.

Honestly, if this same movie were presented to us in a different color scheme, let's say cooler and filled with greens or blues (the amber Hallmark-esque cinematography is unforgivably overwhelming), and if the score were occasionally in a minor key, it would probably feel like something akin to a thriller or black comedy. We'd recognize Evan for the troubled and troubling character he is, and fewer tears would fall as we inched closer to the end of our seats, waiting for him to snap. To be fair, Evan isn't the only heebie-jeebies-inducing person on screen; the film's climax begins when his friend Alanna (Stenberg), who has spearheaded the vigils and campaign to memorialize Connor, outright betrays Evan and publishes his most private letter to the world. Up to that point, she's easily the most decent person in town, and suddenly she destroys whatever sympathetic credibility she has. I mean, come on, who wrote this story, and why?

I'm going to have to do some looking for Levenson interviews to see exactly what the hell he was thinking when he wrote the book of this musical. I can only imagine the filmmakers here were trying to identify with young people struggling with mental health, but there is little direct attempt to honestly deal with those issues here. The depression and suicide elements have the opposite problem of !3 Reasons Why in that they are so vague as to be rendered almost irrelevant; the anxiety issues take center stage, and the characters do everything wrong regarding it. And the movie about emotional manipulation, itself structured manipulatively, can't quite wave through the window at us. It's beautiful and challenging and heartfelt, and those are great things. It'll make you cry, it'll make you cringe, and then it'll leave you reeling about what really happened to your heart. And that's just not my cuppa.

The Card Counter (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Paul Schrader will never be accused of being uninteresting, and his latest feature is no disappointment in that regard. In many ways, it's a standard exercise for the veteran writer/director, concerning the soul of an isolated man on the brink and the moral responsibility with which he struggles. But this movie is no visionary work like First Reformed, his last project, and feels more like some of his '90s films in tone and its almost unbearably slow pacing. Moreover, here Schrader plays a dangerous game with his audience, making the movie appear to be very much one thing before pulling the rug out and revealing his true intentions (a la American Gigolo). Despite its title, marketing, and demeanor, this is not a crime noir about poker. It's a cruel take on revenge thrillers.

Oscar Isaac plays William Tell, a man of staunch discipline who plays poker obsessively. While his name is almost certainly not actually William Tell, he knowingly also goes by "Will Tell," the weaknesses he surely exploits in other poker players in order to win. And yet he doesn't seem to win big. He notes more than once that he wins enough to make good money -- he has no job, no family -- but not enough to be on anyone's radar as a shark or celebrity. In fact, he dryly says, "I hate celebrity gambling" even as we're repeatedly shown his apparent adversary, a jingoistic Americanized player whose groupies chant "U.S.A.!" as they follow him to tournaments. Impeccably dressed and coolly removed from social life, we wonder immediately what's wrong with him.

Because Will Tell doesn't say much, we're forced to read him like he reads the cards. He introduces himself to us in voiceover, describing part of his method in a detached, calculated way. Similarly, later, he offers key bits of gambling wisdom to other characters, indicating his wealth of knowledge as much as his determination to hide elements of himself. That's not all he hides. In the privacy of his motel rooms, the only places he lives, he ritually shrouds all the furniture in white sheets, tied with twine; he wants no decoration, no distraction. It feels uncannily like something from American Psycho, but all he does after shrouding the room is sip whiskey and write in his diary in beautiful script. His tortured mind reveals itself when, after a disturbing recognition of a man presenting at a conference, he retires to bed and undergoes a jarring dream sequence. We see some of his history replayed through fisheye lens: he was a US Army torturer in Abu Ghraib.

Through interspersed flashbacks, we learn a little bit more, including his subsequent stint in prison after the horrors of Abu Ghraib ended. Once, he picks a fight with another violent inmate, apparently hoping to be killed. But his death wish isn't ever realized, which makes his obsession with learning to count cards and play poker a little non-sequitur; then again, the movie presents two compelling reasons for Will to persevere: two new friends he meets while doing what he does. The first, La Linda (a skillfully underplayed Tiffany Haddish), runs a "stable" in which investors back gamblers for a percentage and wants to work with Will; the two flirt and fall in love very casually. The second, Cirk (Tye Sheridan) who pronounces it as "Kirk" but spells it with a "C" as he repeats to everyone, approaches Will in the fateful conference as Will leaves. Cirk can tell Will knows the man speaking (Willem Dafoe) and gives him his number; when they meet up later, Cirk reveals that he's the son of a military man who killed himself out of guilt over what happened in Abu Ghraib. Now Cirk wants revenge on the commanding officer (Dafoe's character, evidently).

Will Will foster the angry and awkward young man, training him in a new skill and hope that this sets Cirk on a better path? Will he face his own guilt and adopt the plan for revenge himself? Schrader's method is to put the pieces together and just let them stew in a brooding, slightly surreal journey through the heart of a man we don't really know. The Card Counter won't be remembered as his best, but it adds to Schrader's fascinating list of hard-hitters. Then again, it's more than worth a watch just to see a beautiful Oscar Isaac do his usual amazing work.