Nope (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The protagonist, at one point, asks his sister about a bad miracle. It's an odd comment in a film largely devoid of religious imagery or ideas, and it happens early enough to spark interest that is never fully explored by the film. A "bad miracle," in context, is what happens to a family after years of decreasing employment and the gradual loss of Hollywood success and fame; it's what happens when coins and other random objects fall from the sky and unexpectedly kills your father; it's what happens when horses from your ranch start disappearing and your livelihood is at stake. But I want us to keep this idea of "bad miracles" in mind, because I think it's a key to understanding Peele and his latest film.

Nope, often repeated throughout the film when strange or bad things happen, is Jordan Peele's third feature film. A member of what I've affectionately called the new triumvirate of horror (along with Ari Aster and Robert Eggers), Peele has hit each of his films out of the park and now, with his third (much like Eggers) he launches it out of the park. He's got a bigger budget and he's expanding his vision many times over. And that leaves us in a curious place in understanding and appreciating this film: it's possibly more accessible to more people as a result of its shift to sci-fi horror rather than straight horror, and it's also arguably more obscure and abstract than either of his previous projects. And, mind you, Us was about as abstract as you can get in terms of existential horror.

Here, he steps firmly into making a movie about making movies. This consummate filmmaking bent allows Peele the chance to show off his own favorite influences as a fan, and few references are more clear than those to Spielberg. Nope starts on a desert ranch, ancestral home of OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) and their family of horse wranglers for the movies, who are trying to make ends meet when they notice strange things happening around the ranch. When they are fairly sure it's a UFO, they try to get help but mostly get laughed at, so they purchase some cameras to catch a perfect shot and reclaim their fame (and fortune). But each time it approaches -- alarmingly frequent -- the electricity wavers, even when generated by battery. Thankfully, the siblings aren't alone, as the local Geek Squad-type retail worker Angel (Brandon Perea) gets caught up in the excitement and danger, along with Jupe (Steven Yeun), who runs a Western-style carnival mostly about aliens in the same valley.

No detail in a Peele film is extraneous or unnecessary to some level of understanding of his craft, and so this review won't attempt a comprehensive survey of possible interpretations of this film. However, there is a lot to consider here, so let's dive in to some of the most interesting bits. If bad miracles -- things that are awesome but also awful -- are the central concern of this film, one must wonder why? The opening text may help guide us, as its quote from the Book of Nahum suggests a malevolent spirit seeking to make a spectacle of "you." The nature of fame and celebrity is a bit of a bittersweet "bad miracle," isn't it? Spectacle is lovely unless it's you; some people like to be spectacular, but the spectators may not always be benevolent.

Nope opens with a flashback -- we don't really know it until later -- to a '90s sitcom about a suburban family with a pet chimpanzee named Gordy. Over the course of the film, through intermittent flashbacks, we get the story of one fateful shoot in which the famed chimp went berserk on set and maimed and/or killed multiple people before it was shot. One actor was unharmed, the child Jupe, who has since built his career on reliving that event and charging visitors to see Gordy-related memorabilia. He even brings a fellow former actor to his carnival to enhance the spectacle he provides, despite her mauled and scarred face so many years later. This determination to monetize spectacle -- exhibited by everyone in the film -- seems to be part of the root of all evil.

Enter the real spectacle of this film, the UFO itself. Rarely seen for the first two-thirds of the film, it lurks in the clouds like an aerial Jaws; when it does pop out, it's as mysterious and magnificent as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This isn't your usual alien horror film, and this thing is predatory and vicious. It disrupts electrical currents nearby and sucks people and things up in dust devils before apparently ingesting them and spitting out the inedible bits. We gradually learn that it specifically targets people who look it -- its hatred of eyes and being watched seems reasonable and highly thematic, given that spectacle requires vision -- and it's in this moment that its animal psychology reveals to OJ that the UFO is less machine than living creature. He works with horses for a living, and he knows not to look it in the eye. When it finally does reveal itself, it's a stunning and ethereal sequence that shook me to the core. SPOILER ALERT: I actually am firmly of the opinion that Peele is complicating our cultural ideas of aliens by suggesting strongly that this creature is also an angel, something natural if not terrestrial that might be called many different things by different cultures and tongues. But we can talk about that more later.

When the siblings find a cinematographer known for capturing impossible shots, they enlist Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) with his completely manual cameras to get "the Oprah shot," as they call it. His self-sacrificing somberness is a bit foreboding, and I wondered more than once if he's meant to be Peele's autobiographical stand-in, giving anything for his art to be perfect. 

As surely others will also note, this film does fixate a bit on particular animals, but here I think they carry slightly more meaning than the deer in Get Out or the rabbits in Us. Obviously horses are literally the siblings' means of living, but they are also beasts of burden that Jupe specifically uses sacrificially. Then there's Gordy, who frankly I suspect was originally meant to be more of an obvious racial trope than the film ultimately suggests; there is nevertheless something deeply disturbing about his scenes and the reminder that, no matter how humanlike monkeys are, they are still wild animals who can and probably will violently snap. All the characters, then, exploit these animals; Jupe also exploits people, you might say, as a result of his own exploitation as a child actor. Fascinatingly, Peele almost denies us the spectacle of Gordy's infamous rampage, only letting us witness what happened before and immediately after, which tells us maybe more about Peele's sensibilities than anything. It made me think more than once of the use of animals in horror in general as a sort of existential nightmare for humans and how we classify and treat whatever we deem sub-human.

And so Nope will spark a lot of conversation and debates about "real meanings" and "hidden secrets" and online videos that have the "ending explained." But don't trust any of it. The meanings and significance of this film, as with any High Art, is up for the beholder to know. Peele knows this, and fully expects his audience to work to appreciate his vision. Thankfully, he also helps us by giving us endless clues to guide our interpretive journeys. I can hardly wait to see this film again; it's probably my least favorite of his films so far, but only because its tone and ideas were so far removed and more expansive than what I expected. So bravo to Peele for pulling the rug out from under us all and giving us a stunning and nearly perfect addition to a franchise that has long since moved on from this kind of bravura ingenuity and passion and old-school technical skill.

Persuasion (2022)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I'm not always a purist with this kind of stuff. Frankly, I rather enjoy when someone recreating an often-adapted or historically popular work adapts it with some anachronistic updates. Consider Joe Wright's Anna Karenina or the recent Emma., both of which revel in their own stylized approach to otherwise familiar material. I'm less fond of full remakes in different settings -- Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You and She's the Man are just not my cup o' tea, though I confess myself partial to Cruel Intentions and Bridget Jones's Diary, among some others -- but sometimes they can really hit it out of the park, such as this year's Fire Island (review forthcoming). Thankfully, the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion sticks pretty close in appearance to its source material. Regrettably, it's also a bit of a tonal mess.

Carrie Cracknell, a modestly famous British theatre director, directs this film as her debut, and it's a mixed bag of results. I couldn't help but feel that she watched a bit too much Bridgerton and Fleabag before starting this project, especially given the apparently colorblind casting (or, perhaps more generously, color-intentional casting) and the protagonist's penchant for breaking the fourth wall and narrating to us directly. Dakota Johnson plays Anne with no shortage of energy and skill, but it never quite feels period appropriate; apart from her occasionally shaky accent work, her wit and dry humor feel a tinge too postmodern-y millennial rather than Regency era. She drinks red wine from the bottle and throws herself around from bathtub to bed (facedown) while drily commenting that she's "thriving" and rolling her eyes at the silly and vain people around her. It's actually very funny in an understated and nuanced way, and I'd have liked to see this side of Johnson in another movie that knows how to harness this brand of comedy.

I say comedy specifically because the early half of this film -- as with most Austen stories -- can be played firmly for laughs. The romance in this adaptation is, sadly, much less exciting, and as one of the more staunchly romantic stories in her canon (perhaps due to Anne's comparably mature demeanor and motivations) it falls rather flaccid when push comes to shove. When Frederick Wentworth showed up, I immediately didn't care about her relationship with him because he's utterly loathsome here. Played by Cosmo Jarvis, he's stiff and obtuse, exuding almost no energy and feeling more like a black hole on the screen. I got none of the charisma or intrigue that would make a character like Anne -- or Johnson, for that matter -- melancholy and obsessive over the thought of loving him. Their complete lack of chemistry is enough to make this viewer feel as though her family was right in persuading (it's the title, y'all) her to dump his ass several years previously. 

Thankfully, there are a few bright spots here. Johnson is really lovely to see working here, out of her usual repertoire. Her father, the vain and free-spending Sir Walter Elliot, is brought to voluptuous life by Richard E. Grant in all his glory. Mia McKenna-Bruce is very funny as Mary, the narcissistic younger sister, and Nia Towle is really lovely as Louisa, the sister-in-law. Nikki Amuka-Bird is electrifying as Lady Russell, and when Henry Golding graces the screen as Mr. Elliot, he revamps the whole movie. He's gorgeous, she's gorgeous, they have effortless chemistry, and frankly I wanted them to run away together because that's the problem with putting intellectual/social romances on screen. We want more eye candy than head candy, so to speak. And, of all the technical elements that are nice but generally immaterial, the cinematography from Joe Anderson (The Old Man and the Gun) is cool and dreamy, filled with the sort of shots that made this kind of movie so popular since Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice in 2005. But the endless narration and chaotic anachronisms -- a "playlist" Wentworth made for Anne is in fact a stack of sheet music, which made me dry heave -- make this movie a lot harder to swallow than I expected or wanted.

Spiderhead (2022)

Score: 1.5 / 5

It took me longer than it should have to understand what was going on in this film. It's playing a very weird game from the outset. While science fiction thrillers work best by destabilizing our sense of context, forcing us to get on their weird wavelength right away, Spiderhead doesn't articulate itself very quickly. In some ways, the film treats us like its characters, trapped in a slightly trippy prison of ideas while being manipulated into a certain attitude. The story takes place in a strange futuristic prison where inmates are generally pretty free but the mysterious prison directors alter the prisoners' brain chemistry for research. They hope to be able to cure the world's problems with various medical enhancements and adjustments, and they use dubious scientist Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) to do it all. 

Inmates have free will in this process -- it seems that saying "acknowledge" is their in-the-moment consent -- and apparently acquiescing can shorten their respective sentences. But it becomes pretty clear pretty soon that Abnesti is playing with fire. The drugs he chooses have intense effects: Laffodil provokes an overwhelming desire to laugh and Darkenfloxx induces extreme psychological pain, the latter resulting (at almost exactly the film's halfway point) in one inmate's graphic suicide. I point out the time of this revelation because the previous 45 minutes or so are almost unbearably dull. Half the movie goes by before we really understand a) the genre is thriller, b) the stakes of the situation, c) the quality (or lack) of the characters themselves. Those are all crucial to this story, and the film squanders them for too long, making everything after feel cheap.

I wondered a few times if I was being had. While I'm not familiar with the short story by George Saunders that inspires this film, it's clear that this film was desperate to stretch the material to a feature length. Screenwriters Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool) try to imbue the proceedings with an off-beat sense of cold humor, and to some extent director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) tries to follow suit by featuring blaring oldies rock and slapping neon pink scrawl on the screen for the opening and closing credits. Even Hemsworth vacillates between playing the role as a fairly serious therapist who may genuinely care about his patients/prisoners and a somewhat campy mad scientist who gets off on watching paranoid and horny people suffering under his control. The problem is that the film takes so long to get us to this realization -- or appreciation -- and nothing before adds up to much.

I kept waiting for this film to take a Shutter Island kind of turn, to make a political or moral statement like The Stanford Prison Experiment, or even to pull a Stephen King and make a humanist story about overcoming odds like in The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile. But it never does; it routinely marches forward, hitting all the familiar beats, reaching an uninteresting and uninspired climax that felt as though the filmmakers hadn't seen any movies since the late '90s. In fact, the few moments of actual revelation are so poorly executed, I find myself wondering again if this movie plays itself dumb for some smart reason. At the aforementioned midway scene, Abnesti drops his office keys while running to try and help the suicide; inmate Jeff (Miles Teller), nominally the protagonist, slowly grabs them and opens his desk drawers for unclear reasons, suddenly discovering that Abnesti is fully in charge of the program and experiments, not a mysterious board or committee. 

Maybe I just don't care about sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi. But this movie couldn't even make any statements -- or, much more better, open possibilities for further consideration and conversation -- about the prison system or pharmaceutical corruption. It says nothing about incarcerated men trying to help or one-up each other, about the psychological strain of the imprisoned or real attempts to help. It just exists for no satisfying reason and can't even muster up the artistic gumption to make itself memorable or worthwhile. What a waste.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Thank the gods that Taika Waititi turned to big-budget filmmaking when he did. His Thor: Ragnarok is easily in my top five of the franchise, and while Love and Thunder doesn't quite harness the same magic for me, it is essentially just more of the same, and I love that. Its funky rock vibes are essentially what might happen if James Gunn was more kid-friendly and jumped into Norse mythology; vibrant colors and kinetic energy arrest everyone in the cinema immediately and then the good humor and raucous action come into play. Waititi also knows how to make a good villain in these films, and this time he thoroughly surprised me with the baddie as much as he did with some of the goodies.

The lovable and hilarious Korg (Waititi) gets the film going this time in partial voiceover, relating to the young New Asgardians the tale of how Thor went "from dad bod to god bod" after his meme-creating time with a beer belly. Thanks to his friends the Guardians (it's a cute cameo/crossover montage), he's back in fighting form with his axe Stormbreaker, even if his love life is a bit on the sorry side. What's a hunky Norse god to do? He starts by returning to his new home and consulting with King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), who has made New Asgard fabulous for the remnants of their population as well as for the booming tourism of their town. Suddenly another person in Thor's traditional garb appears as he fights off shadowy monsters. Who could it be?

Someone behind the MCU has been listening to our prayers because it's Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a character and actor who has deserved more time in this franchise. Somberly, the film early on reintroduces her as suddenly having stage four cancer. She seeks out Norse myth to fight it, leading her to the broken pieces of Mjolnir, which we learn Thor had magically bonded to Jane previously. Jane, even as the new Thor, is not a god, and each time she uses the hammer, her life force drains. It's a dire situation, but the former lovers don't have much time to really delve into their history or problems yet. First, they need to dispatch these shadow monsters and confront their ringleader.

Enter Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), a desiccated wraith of a man who is utterly terrifying each time he appears. Chalky and pale, robed in a white tunic, he was a devout man of faith until his daughter died unceremoniously. A powerful weapon called the Necrosword seemingly summons him and seduces him, enabling him to kill his god before launching Gorr on a quest to kill all gods. It's not always the most inspired choice of role -- something rudely between Voldemort and Rasputin with a dash of Pennywise -- but seeing Bale in this kind of balls-out performance is delicious. Humble as usual, he lets it all out when Gorr teeters on the brink of sanity, allowing his voice to sprint from whispering high points to growling low points. Unfortunately, he's not really given a lot to do, per se: yes, his tragic backstory is the first sequence of this film, but he generally doesn't do a whole lot of actual god-butchering during the movie. Instead, the main plot involves his abduction of New Asgard's children to lure Thor out; he's terrifying in his interactions with the kids, but it's mostly unstable monologuing and shadow monsters.

Thor's adventure takes him, notably, to a vaguely Greek or Roman forum -- a la Clash of the Titans -- were a veritable Star Wars senate session is in full swing as deities from all kinds of religions gather to discuss godly things. Namely, details for their next orgy as they remain in hiding from Gorr. It's a hilarious and fascinating sequence, including Quetzalcoatl and various godly characters, one that would require lots of pausing and zooming to really study the sheer abundance of creativity. Then enter Russell Crowe as Zeus -- yes, that Zeus -- and it's just about as absurdist and joyous as you could imagine. It's also one of those moments in the MCU, generally, that smacks of manipulation as we realize it's setting up potential future stories to be told in this series and franchise (peep at the mid-credits sequence involving Hercules, and you'll know exactly what I mean; it's a lot like what they didn't do with Mordo in the Doctor Strange sequel).

I confess myself annoyed at the screenplay's misuse of Valkyrie, who was so badass previously and deserved more swashbuckling action in this film as the king. Specifically, the endless queerbaiting of this character -- that, given her new role as king in a new place and with a title like this movie has -- has culminated in promises that she will find a partner, and all we got in this film was an almost passing reference to her deceased former female partner. And while the reunion between Thor and Jane was lovely, it did ring a bit hollow for me (no spoilers, but it's just bittersweet), as it was maybe just too little too late. Waititi's direction is never disappointing, and apart from the generally gorgeous visuals of this film -- the golden ichor of the gods and their guards -- Waititi really pulls out the stops during a magnificent fight between Thor and Gorr on a black-and-white shadow planet. It's brilliant moments like this that make some of the grander, big-budget sequences feel uninspired, but thankfully the creative team here knows where to put their money as well as their talent.

Oh, and the continued gag with the Asgardian actors is utterly priceless.

After Yang (2022)

Score: 2.5 / 5

"Techno sapiens" exist in the world of this film, humanoid versions of Siri or Alexa. Artificial intelligence in seemingly organic bodies that can learn and grow, help around the house, and even help build a family. It's not as far-off science fiction as most in the genre these days, and since movies like Marjorie Prime and Ex Machina, it's all the more believable in understated, naturalistic presentation. Enter Kogonada (Columbus), the elusive and enigmatic South Korean video essayist and recent writer and director of features, whose filmmaking style is some of the most confident and assured -- and abstract -- of any relatively new director. I wouldn't have expected a sci-fi drama from him so soon after his work in midwestern architecture, but his sensitivity around existential human experience certainly makes this material worthy of his time and efforts.

After Yang, referring to the character who is actually a techo sapien, is about what it means to be human. That sounds vague, and some viewers may also describe this film as vague; it is, even to someone as patient and eager as me. More than in his previous film, this movie really stretches for its moments of heightened sensation and revelation, and I often felt its goals were beyond its ability to grasp. Yang (Justin H. Min) was purchased by a young couple named Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) to become part of their family; it's suggested that he was meant as a companion to their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) as an older brother and also a tie to her east Asian culture. The movie begins as Yang breaks down.

Unfortunately, because they purchased Yang refurbished, the warranty isn't valid and Jake doesn't even know how to contact the original buyer or seller. Yang's unresponsiveness isn't helpful, so Jake ends up at a parts dealer who removes Yang's memory bank. Viewing this takes a significant portion of the film: snippets, only seconds long, of things Yang deemed important or impactful enough to store. Connecting with his "sister" Mika, listening to Jake and Kyra, pretty flowers or dappled sunlight through trees; some of these moments could have come directly from a Terrence Malick film. It's touching to see Jake's face as he witnesses these moments, and Kogonada is begging us to consider the fantasy of looking into the memories of a loved one who is gone. What would they have remembered? What was important enough that they recorded and replayed for themselves? Perhaps most important, how did they see and think of you? Interestingly, Jake also comes across images of a young woman named Ada (Haley Ly Richardson), and so a small mystery unfolds.

Yang's previous life -- remember, he was refurbished -- is interesting and revealing in itself, and does involve clones and other sci-fi tropes. Kogonada doesn't use these tropes in ordinary ways, and some of it feels a little forced, as though he realized simply considering the life of an android wouldn't be enough to spark interest for a full feature. What I'd rather discuss here is Kogonada's approach to the storytelling. Hushed, not rushed, and deeply sensitive to every breath and every beat the characters take. He alters the aspect ratio occasionally to highlight the differing narrative perspectives (particularly for Yang's memories). One that stood out to me was the beautifully written and filmed scene in which Jake describes his love of tea. Not drinking it -- Jake doesn't even really like it -- but the process of growing and preparing and brewing it, as well as presumably the naturalistic aspects and subsequent social aspects of tea-drinking. Yang, as an android, can't quite understand that raw passion, despite his encyclopedic knowledge of everything to do with tea.

There are other concerns of the film, each of which would make for fascinating post-screening discussions. When a loved one passes, how do we remember them, and to what extent are those memorials public or private? Social media has dramatically complicated and confused some of those deeply human -- and often religious -- traditions, leaving space for so many questions and not nearly enough accessible answers. Another crucial scene occurs between Kyra and Jake as they consider what comes after life, and the natural implication or next questions have to ask about an afterlife for artificial intelligence. What constitutes a life, and how can we be sure to honor it appropriately? It's all very somber stuff, but there are gorgeous ideological gems to find if you relax and get on Kogonada's wavelength.

You Won't Be Alone (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Experimental horror of a surprisingly high order, this movie is what happens if you cross Robert Eggers's The Witch with Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. Folk horror as if it were directed by Terrence Malick. Nothing is quite what you expect or what it seems, and even the most obvious of symbols is probably more. Case in point: the opening shot in a cat's perspective as it moves across the ground is, in fact, the feline form taken by a witch, the film's antagonist. Old Maid Maria is a local legend, a boogeyman in Macedonia in the 19th century. Why this film chooses this setting, we may never know, but it is dedicated to telling its tale like David Lowery's folk dramas, and I was all too willing to see where it took us.

She's pursuing a newborn, though her reason is never clear; reasons never really matter in these Grimm-like tales of rural witches and naughty children and absent or inconsequential parents. Thus the newborn's mother foolishly offers the witch her child only after its sixteenth birthday. Then the witch -- played by Anamaria Marinca beneath burn prosthetics that look not unlike Freddy Krueger -- agrees and disappears into one of her many animal forms. She'll be back, and all too soon. The film skips ahead to the child's sixteenth birthday, when a sentient eagle appears in the cave where the mother has hidden her precious daughter (in a scene strongly reminiscent of the Rapunzel legend).

From here, the fairytale mostly ends, though the fantasy has only just begun. This is not a journey toward freedom for young Nevena, but rather toward her own identity. She is soon turned into a witch by Maria, who tries to teach her how witches behave; Nevena doesn't like killing small mammals for food and prefers playing with them. Maria, frustrated, feels she has wasted her (apparently one and only) chance to "procreate" and make a witch apprentice, so she abandons Nevena to fend for herself. Like characters in Orlando or even Frankenstein, Nevena must put on the guises of other people to learn the ways of the world. Specifically, she learns how to pull out their intestines after she has killed them and put them inside herself before she changes form. This is when the movie really kicks into "Malick mode," when Nevena's voiceover narration embraces abstraction and the editing and cinematography are more interested in the impressionistic visuals of her surroundings rather than delve into her actual headspace or experience.

She jumps from body to body -- killing as she goes, sometimes from self-defense or even on accident -- and even experiences and likes life as a man. Interestingly, the second half of the film is largely concerned with this in gendered terms, as Nevena learns how she is treated by men and women as both a man and a woman; if the film has a message, I'd hazard it targets toxic masculinity and its social effects on gendered societal roles. It doesn't have much to say on that front, but it's a fascinating direction for this movie to go, and thankfully it never reaches into social horror or, heaven forbid, gender exploitation to get its points across. I don't think I could have handled rape or other real-life horrors in this kind of film, especially when the protagonist is mostly mute. Instead, the film smartly and devotedly operates (again, not unlike Orlando) beyond the cishet language we would ordinarily use to describe the narrative. And while it doesn't really have much to say, ultimately, it showcases the talents of gifted filmmakers -- and its first-time director -- in a film most men wouldn't have the balls to make.

Watcher (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Hitchcockian in the best way, Watcher is the latest domestic thriller available on demand right now. The story concerns Julia, new to Bucharest and isolated by her ignorance of the language. She's disoriented and apparently lonely, as her Romanian husband is off working his new marketing job. Her possible paranoia is immediately clear to us in her introduction scene to their new apartment with its large picture window. Looking out at her neighbors across the way, she quickly notices a man staring at her. As the days progress, he tends to pop up in that window, looking right back at her. Is he lonely, too? Maybe, but there's a distinct menace to his presence, perhaps partly because we are not allowed to see anything of the interior of his apartment.

When I reference Hitchcock, I mean as in Rear Window, of course, and Dial M for Murder and Rope; this film also works hard to establish itself within the fairly recent trend of woman-led domestic thrillers such as The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, and the works of Gillian Flynn. Interestingly, this movie pretty much plays itself as seriously as it can, and also in an almost off-putting straightforward fashion. There's never really doubt that the creepy man across the way is, in fact, "The Spider," a serial killer known for beheading his female victims. There aren't a lot of police to create drama from shifting power dynamics or character conflict; there isn't a lot of drama to Julia or her husband, either. This is a stylized arthouse film that is almost too accessible for its own good in that there aren't wild plot twists or shocking character revelations. This is pretty much exactly what its synopsis implies.

Its seriousness isn't just in terms of its screenplay or performances, though Maika Monroe is chillingly economical in meting out her growing dread and discomfort. Director Chloe Okuno is so determined to get us in Julia's headspace that she often shoots in massive wide shots, working extra hard to isolate Julia in the dubiously oversized apartment, and in cold or bland light to smooth everything over and give the uncanny feeling of being institutionalized. Even the choices of colors -- Julia's red sweater and tights, for example -- feel intentional in a quiet but bold manner, suggesting sometimes thematic or character insights that might otherwise be absent from the screenplay (the red feels like the color differences in Psycho, where here we might suspect Julia's heated suspicions manifesting in her wardrobe, or even perhaps suspect that her lonely walks through town may not be as innocent as we first supposed. Long stretches of silence fill the cavernous visuals of this film, icily silencing the film's audience (or putting them to sleep, if this isn't your thing) into a pattern of baited breath.

As Julia begins to see the titular watcher around town -- even realizing, horribly, that he is certainly stalking her -- we begin to wonder if the title refers to him or to her. She is watching him just as much as he is watching her, if it's even him. We wonder why her husband isn't more disturbed about her concerns, but he plays it in a way that might suggest either deep misogyny (she's surely hysterical, being alone in a new place) or prior experience (she's unhinged by some mental illness or trauma he's seen before). It's not made clear by the film either way, but it allows us to feel, as Julia does, that she is very much on her own in this situation. I was reminded, too, of other films, like Charade and Gaslight and Repulsion and began to wonder if the husband was somehow implicated. But this film is, as I noted, much too straightforward for that. And, while there are indeed some frightening "action" scenes, this movie is brave enough to keep things vague, suggestive, realistic, and intensely psychological. Half the horror of this film is its active attempts to get us to think about what if and what might happen; when the threat is unmasked, it's not quite so scary. But it's still thrilling!

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

A chamber piece of the highest order, viewing this film is very much an exercise in theatrical immediacy. I would have paid out the nose to see this as a play, performed in the round -- or, provocatively, in thrust -- and frankly I hope that happens to the script. It deserves the kind of raw power live performance could give it. It's structured in, roughly, three acts, each an encounter between the two main characters and mostly in the same physical space (a hotel room). Live theatre would allow for a stunning and breathtaking breakdown of boundaries between audience and performance, to breathe the same air as these actors as they learn that the boundaries between their own minds and bodies should by no means be as strict as they've made them.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is one of those movies lately unceremoniously dropped in a streaming service (Hulu) that has very little hope of cultivating a wide audience, and yet it almost works better streaming than I think it would in wide theatrical release. And this from a professed cinema junkie! Between its subject matter, its filmed style, and its general premise, this is the kind of film that I think most people would want to see from the comfort of their homes. I think immediately of films like Last Chance Harvey and of course It's Complicated, but also of earlier films such as Pretty Woman in which sex is the primary narrative vehicle and who really wants to sit in a crowded auditorium to explore one's sexuality?

The first scene is the initial encounter between our two characters. Nancy (Emma Thompson) is an uptight school teacher -- religious education -- and fairly recent widow; now that her late husband is out of the way, she is feeling sexually curious and adventurous. She has never had an orgasm, she says early on, and her only partner has been her spouse, who literally only allowed missionary style ever and who never fulfilled her. As a result, she has finally hired a sex worker for the night. Enter Leo (Daryl McCormack), a handsome and sexually free young thing who enters her life eager to please her. We learn fairly early on that he's not a nymphomaniac or a player; he genuinely gets off on pleasing other people. He says he's never had a client he's been unattracted to, and while Nancy (and we) may not initially believe it, he delivers a monologue about halfway through this film that reveals his biggest kink: seeing others as their bodies relax in pleasure. So, with these two initially incompatible people, can a relationship work?

Of course, many will go into this movie expecting a rom-com. And in some ways, they are right. There are plenty of chuckles, giggles, and nervous guffaws as things get going. Ultimately, the first night isn't all it's cracked up to be, and they spend most of the time talking with each other. One might consider that Nancy at least is demisexual, as it is only after a lengthy conversation that she can finally relax enough to let Leo touch her intimately. He doesn't get her to orgasm -- it's implied that all they do is kiss and finger before sleeping -- but she's very happy about where this is going. An immature film would turn this into a love story between the two characters. This is not an immature film.

Their emotional attachment is paired beautifully by the chemistry of the two actors. I've rarely seen such erotic passion -- which is to say, realistic behavior of longing and hesitation -- between two people on screen in my life of watching movies. Nancy is perhaps a little too relatable to this viewer, constantly dredging up her self-loathing in witty retorts and vicious self-flagellation about her body, her career, her family. Leo is kind and patient, funny and sincere, and confident to a dangerous fault. Nancy could be his mother, and she knows it; he doesn't care, but he hints multiple times that his own relationship with his mother is off-limits. He has a job to do, after all.

Their engagement, so to speak, is the crux of the film. The first scene is their first night together. The second is their second, in which the wide-eyed Nancy has written a list (again, far too relatable) of exactly what she wants to experience sexually with him. The third is their third, in which it seems clear that she is looking for more than just sex -- though not necessarily with him -- and he refuses to cross that line, especially after learning she's been investigating him. Finally, they reconvene to settle their miscommunications and it turns into a passionate affair that they both peaceably determine to be their last tryst.

That's it. That's the plot. But it's far from the essence of the film, in which multitudes of emotional growth occur for the characters and for us, if we take the time and energy to invest in it. It's an actor's master class, to be sure, and it's also a directorial master class and a writerly master class. Rarely have we seen such emotionally intelligent and patient dialogue about the nature of sex, aging, intimacy, body positivity, or even for that matter career positivity, sex positivity, and even cross-generational intimacy. Leo isn't a magic worker, and some of the most potent bits of dialogue happen when his touch makes Nancy even more horrified and stressed about the situation; godlike as McCormack may be, a model can't just force someone to relax and enjoy their own body or experience. He needs to teach the teacher what pleasure really is, not just what it means.

Moreover, this film is, by the end, as much a character study as it is a manifesto lambasting the baggage we, culturally, attach to sex. It is, by far, the most sex-positive and pro-sex-work film I've ever seen. It's not sex that sucks joy and fulfillment and satisfaction out of our lives, but the baggage we carry after doing it. Or worse, before doing it, when it's only in our minds. This is a far cry from Pretty Woman or American Gigolo. This is reality, and it's beautiful as long as the people involved are professional and sensitive and kind. And then there's the film's final two shots. I can't and won't spoil them here, but I was a weeping, sobbing mess in the most joyful and self-actualizing way I've ever experienced in a film like this. What a fabulous message to send to any aging woman -- or anyone, really -- about feeling at home in your own skin. I absolutely had no idea where this film was going, and the ending was the most beautifully satisfying ending I couldn't have imagined. Brava!

The Northman (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

It's unlike anything you've ever seen before. Well, mostly. Taken from the medieval myth that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Northman is a rare film that feels completely timeless even while pushing modern boundaries of what is cinematically possible. Beautiful and challenging, it reminds us why we culturally carry these far-removed stories with us and revitalize them time and again. In director Robert Eggers's masterful hands, both the film and its audience are in for a soul-shaping artistic experience. Prepare yourself for this one; everything may not be "perfect," but as so few films are this well-crafted, I'm just going to love a lot on it right now. Plus, there are precious few real epics for adults anymore, and this one checks all the damn boxes and then some!

Eggers is not interested in American folklore this time, but in Scandinavian legend, and he approaches this differently; less time seems to have been spent on perfecting any kind of authentic dialogue, as he painstakingly endured in his feminist frontier fright fest or his neurotic nautical nightmare, and more time carefully constructing the right look and feel for a culture none of us really knows much about. Aesthetically and thematically, the closest things I can compare this to would be The Revenant and The Green Knight, in terms of mythic worldbuilding and of course the plot itself. And, as we might imagine from his previous work, he is adept at including psychological torment, atmospheric dread, and sequences of dreamlike weirdness that are always ambiguous and memorable. The difference here is that the scale is huge, as opposed to his two earlier chamber pieces.

Mythology is weird, even when the drama is profoundly human. Enter Amleth (a sinfully muscular Alexander Skarsgård doing great work), an angry warrior prince determined to reclaim his kingdom, throne, mother, and honor. Years earlier, his uncle Fjölnir  (Claes Bang) murdered Amleth's father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) before taking the queen (Nicole Kidman) as his own wife. Amleth escaped the massacre as a young boy and swore vengeance. The skipped years of his adolescence and young adulthood have turned him into a one-man army, a Viking berserker on the verge of becoming a wolf or bear in the vast, unforgiving landscapes of their homeland (his tribe of roving warriors are all too content to howl at the moon while dancing naked by a bonfire). While raiding a village, he meets a witch who reminds him of his former home, stoking the fires of revenge and sending him on his way before disappearing into thin air.

Here, the overarching concerns are for deconstructing patriarchal structures and questioning traditional masculinities, but there is ample room for the age-old questions about family loyalty and the dubious folly of revenge. In this kill-or-be-killed world on the earliest edges of civilization, the characters aren't really much more than animals in their desires and actions, and consequences are vague at best, unless it ends in plentiful bloodshed. But, as with any myth, there are lots of considerations along the way, including the role of this witch (and her inciting incident) as well as a "he-witch" or shaman (played by Björk) later; there are considerations of the king's fool or jester Heimir (Willem Dafoe), who the uncle also kills but who returns, in a sense, later to aid Amleth. Other considerations: Queen Gudrun has had a new child with Fjölnir and we never really know where her loyalties lie or why; Amleth's paramour Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a slave and witch of sorts herself, and she seems eager for Fjölnir's blood independently of Amleth, so is she a Lady Macbeth suddenly hungry for blood or is she a dutiful wife, or something in between? These are only basic concerns -- ones, you might notice, that easily cross over into the territory of Shakespearean criticism, proof that new adaptations don't have to (and shouldn't) answer the big literary mysteries -- but showcase the broad range of interpretive and artistic paths into appreciating this film.

Eggers and his team -- especially his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke -- lean heavily into their most daring instincts, pushing for long tracking shots often, usually during an attack or raid. Moments like these reminded me keenly of Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant, in which there is an almost immeasurable amount of care and precision and craft in so many people, in such a tightly constructed set, perfectly executing their jobs to create a wholly believable and absorbing world in the middle of absolute chaos. It's the very best form of theatre. The fires they set on village huts are the campfires to which we draw close and attempt to shut out the cold and dark; unfortunately, these fires are violent and bloody and perhaps more horrifying than what lies in the cold darkness. But even as the film draws attention to itself as film -- even the landscapes are utterly gobsmacking -- it enhances itself with subtle effects, such as the bluish family tree that Amleth imagines rising from his heart and showing his various relatives (and offspring). Scenes like this, underscored by brooding, synthetic music, reminded me of David Lowery's The Green Knight (bolstered by the power of myth), though this movie is quite emotionally removed from that masterpiece, seemingly eager to thrive in pain and violence rather than hope or peace. Indeed, after the film ended, I felt little other than exhaustion. Satisfaction, to be sure, and lots of joy for various elements, but it's a brutal two-and-a-half hours of greed and lust and revenge.

The Black Phone (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Thank goodness Scott Derrickson chose to bless us with another horror film. Sinister is, in my not-quite-humble opinion, perhaps the scariest movie I've ever seen; The Exorcism of Emily Rose is one of the smartest and most beautiful horror movies I've ever seen. After Deliver Us from Evil, Derrickson joined the MCU and I feared we'd lose the raw genius to big-budgeted committee-written work. But the man still knows what he's doing and clearly loves making movies like this. It's not on par with his scariest or most provocative work, but it's certainly a scary time at the cinema! This one feels much more emotionally resonant than the writer-director's previous work; it's also his most hopeful horror film to date.

Based on a short story by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King), The Black Phone feels much like other work by the esteemed writer from Maine. It's got the '70s nostalgic elements, the oddball outcast kids, schoolyard bullying, a very real-world monster, and some ambiguously supernatural elements that provide both dread and awe. The story concerns Finney and Gwen, siblings who live in a suburb near Denver with their widower father, an abusive alcoholic (played by character actor Jeremy Davies). They go to school and navigate their way between bullies -- although the younger Gwen tends to be a bit more protective in those instances -- before heading home, and it's not always clear which they dread more. But when Finney's best friend Bruce disappears, not even the journey to school or back home is a safe time for the kids.

Bruce has been kidnapped by The Grabber, a mysterious criminal in the neighborhood, who has been abducting teenage boys in broad daylight. A new age bogeyman, he primarily operates out of a black windowless van labeled for his part-time magician work. Dubious as that occupation may be, he does cut quite a menacing figure for the first third of the film, seen primarily in the distance or through what appears to be Super 8 film reels, often accompanied by a bundle of black balloons. He looks like a cross between Pennywise and the Babadook, in all black except for a white, garish face and tall black top hat. He's played by Ethan Hawke, in a rare turn for the actor as a villain (this is his second time this year, after Moon Knight), and despite my general misgivings about the actor, he's extraordinary here. We don't even really see him for almost half the movie, and when we do he's almost always covered by a mask or parts of a mask that appear interchangeable, for different faces. He's still and calculated and calm (for the most part), and even rather effete, which is annoying but accurate to the social fears of the time; he is given no real backstory or sympathy by the screenplay, so he's just a terrifying evil man. Curiously, despite his limp wristed mannerisms, the film stops short of declaring that he's molesting or abusing these adolescent boys. But, like Freddy in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, it's clear what his sins are even when it's carefully never mentioned.

Gwen sees psychic visions of the Grabber and his crimes, and when she tells the detectives about it, her father is approached at work for questioning and later takes out his embarrassment on Gwen's backside violently. He should be kinder, because before long Finney is taken, too. Held in a soundproof basement, bare of all but a dingy toilet and tattered mattress, Finney immediately starts looking for a way out. The only window is a little too high and is blocked by bars. The massive door is bolted shut. And the wall-mounted black telephone isn't connected to any lines. The Grabber occasionally feeds him, but he's clearly not going to be eating well. Gwen prays fervently for help in navigating her visions and to see where her brother is being held. Finney isn't idle, but his situation seems pretty hopeless. When the phone starts to ring, though, things really get weird.

It may not strike audiences as weird in the age of cell phones, but to have a clunker like the titular phone start ringing in a nasty bare cellar is plenty creepy on its own. Add to it the disembodied voices of Bruce and the other kidnapped and murdered boys, and it's a miracle Finney doesn't lose his marbles. But the voices, overcoming some vague forgetfulness that apparently accompanies death, seem eager to help Finney escape, and they get him to work on multiple projects, including pulling a wire out from the walls, tearing off the window bars, and digging a hole in front of the toilet. When the Grabber begins playing "games" with Finney -- see, I told you he's a pervert -- and leaves the door unlocked, the phone rings to warn Finney that the games are tests, and failure means death. Bravery will mean death.

The nostalgic element is present in the film's mise en scène, of course, but also in its presentation. Much as he used Super 8 film in Sinister, here the spliced "archive" footage depicts many of the crimes happening. It also, interestingly, connects to Gwen's visions, something I would have liked a little more clarity regarding. Along that line of thematic thinking, there is a lot here regarding kid-to-kid support systems, cycles of parental/adult abuse of kids, and the bonds of youth forged by trauma. Even the Grabber, fey as he might sometimes be, could also be described as childlike in some ways, suggesting perhaps that his psychosexual development was arrested as an adolescent (I think this theory falls apart in the film's climactic confrontation, but it's debatable for sure!). I told you this wasn't far from Stephen King's oeuvre. 

It's the kid actors who deserve the praise for this film though. Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are just stunning young performers, in full command of their craft while headlining in roles that are at once thankless and demanding. Apart from them, the film is suitably thrilling, deeply chilling, and pretty fun in a macabre sort of way. They imbue the plethora of drama with believable heart, turning even the most horrific of moments into genuine tragedy or panic, sometimes simply falling silent under the burden of parental abuse and survival while sitting together. And that's what makes this horror film so emotionally involving and satisfying.