Black Phone 2 (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Black Phone was, in my opinion, over-hyped and hasn't really stood the test of time, even in only four years. I liked it well enough, but repeat viewings have made its substantial plot holes increasingly difficult to swallow. Some movies are just meant to be seen once and enjoyed as such; Derrickson's mastery of suggestive suspense and brutal scares is too profound for him to make a mediocre cinematic experience. However, the story was simplistic, messy, and too vague for its own good. Perhaps that's why Ethan Hawke's villainous Grabber character has maintained its interest: he's enigmatic enough to be upsetting. I think of him the way I think of Michael Myers: sure, he's scary enough, but it's not until he should be dead and rises again anyway that we really lock into the horror Laurie Strode is up against.

When a sequel was announced, I blanched. Joe Hill only wrote a single short story, and that was adapted into the first film; what could happen next, with the Grabber dead? But I'm glad I reserved judgment, because Black Phone 2, despite its terrible title, took me on a wild ride that scared me, provoked my curiosity in refreshing ways, and eventually helped me think of its predecessor in a kinder light. That's pretty remarkable these days, with strung-along sequels and remakes that never try to do something really weird and make it work.

I won't recount much plot here, because piecing it together is part of the fun to be had, but Black Phone 2 relocates Finney and Gwen, now considerably older, to a Christian camp alongside a mountainous lake in their home state of Colorado. Led by Gwen's visions of their dead mother's time working there, the kids (and Gwen's new boyfriend) arrive amidst a terrible snowstorm, isolating them in cabins along with the four camp staffers stationed there. Gwen's visions worsen, and Finney receives calls via the camp's decommissioned payphone: the Grabber, long dead, has figured out a way to seek revenge on Finney for killing him. The logic is a bit unclear, but he's haunting a site of his own early murders, reinforcing the psychic connection between the Grabber and the kids through their mother, whose unwelcome visions allowed her to see his victims and eventually drove her mad (and to suicide, as was presumed in the previous film). 

Less like Michael Myers and more like Freddy Krueger, this film swings into directions I was not at all expecting, and Derrickson's aesthetic choices in the first film are doubled down on here, making his earlier choices make more sense. For example, the first film features intercuts of what appear to be Super 8mm footage indicating the abduction/murder scenes of what we know to be missing persons; it's utilizing a sort of mockumentary/found footage technique for no reason because of course no one was filming those crimes. Yet in this film, it's finally clear that that technique is simply a visual cue as to how Gwen's visions appear: grainy, blurry, awkwardly spliced together. Whereas I thought it was, before, a cheap ploy capitalizing on Derrickson's terrifying successes in Sinister (which it may well have been), now I see it as a suitably reasonable approach to non-anachronistic visual representation that the character herself would be familiar with.

Regardless, the Grabber's crimes are no longer so pedestrian, and here he's got a nasty axe to grind. Literally. The bloody violence of this film had me gagged, and I mean that literally as well, because it was not what I expected. Hawke returns, and this time he's not quite as chillingly spooky; nor is he as sexually suggestive, which I both liked and wish we had some closure about. His first outing was like Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates: performative and cerebral, rather femme and quietly disturbed. This time, he's full-on psycho, an edge of diabolic malevolence to his gravelly voice, launching headfirst into rooms from shadowy corners and taking broad swings with his weapons of choice. He's not going to trick or toy with his victims now. He's going to dismember them. 

Surreal nightmare logic won't work for everyone, but this movie worked for me on that front. I also liked that Gwen takes more of a leading role here, and the actors (excellent already in the first film) deliver shockingly mature performances yet again. Finney has the thankless position of trying to become a man with the only role model of his father (Jeremy Davies, who returns in a diminished capacity here), who is only tenuously no longer alcoholic and abusive. Naturally, Finney has some junk still to sort through mentally, and he's numbing his pain and his life as a result. Gwen's visions this time are more brutal, and so is her treatment by the Grabber, making the nature of violence in this film a really cool counterpoint to the first: then, it was suggestive, abductive, and sexual, whereas now, it's explicit, bodily, and psychic. 

This is still a big-budget slasher film, even with its ghostly elements, and it doesn't all cohere the way we might want. Rather than allowing the kids' dynamics to breathe naturally, they're forced into conversations that reveal key things laid out as breadcrumbs by the writers, building to a contrived climax that only works as the sum of these crumbs. The camp staffers, including Demian Bichir and Arianna Rivas, are mostly forgettable, only there to allow the kids chances to explain what's happening and to spur them on to make tough decisions and help with physical tasks, such as searching a frozen lake for bodies stashed there more than twenty years prior. 

Crazy? Yeah, and that's the kind of weird thing that a film like this should have worked out in, well, workshop. Derrickson is too good to let a weird screenplay get in his way, but this story (like the previous one) could have used some serious help in development. But if you're willing to let plot holes and strange logical jumps be what they are, Black Phone 2 has boons in store. Terrifyingly choreographed and edited sequences turn nightmarish visions into impossible realities, shifting between visual modes as we watch the Grabber viciously tearing apart his victims while, in waking cuts, bodies of teenagers are flung about with spurts of blood. Derrickson and his cinematographer milk the snowy, mountainous landscape for all its worth, often using window panes and ice as our actual frame into their world. And while Derrickson's penchant for religious content isn't gone here -- Gwen still talks to Jesus for help in her wonderfully crass way, and the Grabber's mask is about as demonic as you can get -- it does feel earned and grounded in ways we so rarely see (these are not idolatrous possession films bogged down in Catholic imagery or emotionally manipulative Warren-esque normative families). This works surprisingly well in a film that basically turns a one-off spooky story into a full-fledged supernatural slasher franchise. Where else has the Grabber killed kids? Will he go on to haunt those places, too?

Leave the World Behind (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

A relentlessly intriguing, engaging, and frustrating experience, Leave the World Behind is one of the most purely entertaining and provocative films of the past year, and I can't get it out of my head. Soon I intend to read the novel on which it is based and re-watch the film in the hopes of giving my brain some closure, but in the meantime, this will have to suffice. Unceremoniously debuting on Netflix in December, this thriller boasts some breakneck plot shifts, blockbuster visuals, and effectively gut-punching acting in ways that had me repeatedly gobsmacked during its two hours and twenty minutes.

To start with: plot and tone. I'll try not to spoil too much, but no promises; you've been warned. The story is essentially about a family in NYC who visit a Long Island mansion for a weekend away from their busy lives, only to have a series of strange and terrifying events occur that cut off their ability to return home or communicate with the outside world, indicating the onset of some apocalyptic event. Not "apocalypse" as in the literal end of the world, but in the sense of the revelation that certain unknown powers are taking over by force and the foreboding threat that everyone's lives are about to change, if they survive. The plot moves along swiftly, from credible threats to believable incidents, including the knockout of satellites and transit comms to the failure of ship and plane navigation systems, even to the spread of (likely) misinformation and scapegoating of possible terrorists or shadow uprisings. It's all a little too familiar a fear for us these days, and the film plays on the mystery to inform our suspense.

But the film is not always -- is, in fact, rarely -- focused on the macro picture. Rather, everything is filtered for us through the eyes and ears of the family we follow. Amanda Sanford, her husband Clay, and their children Rose and Archie are excited for their time away until, once at the mansion, the house's owners show up at night. Issues of class and race bleed into their confrontation: the Sanfords (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, white) do not trust the strangers G.H. Scott and much younger Ruth (Mahershala Ali and Myha'la, not white), who claim to own the house but their story for why they needed to return doesn't quite add up. A power outage and some chaos in the city could perhaps be the cause, but their demeanor is prickly and sly; Amanda's latent racism peeks through in her suspicion and in her indignation at having booked the mansion for her own family's use. I was reminded more than once of the social anxiety milked to dramatic tension in the first act of Barbarian.

Writer and director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot, Gaslit) knows about the cinematic language of post-apocalytpic movies and exploits it in what is essentially something just shy of it: a conspiracy apocalypse. This isn't the energy of A Quiet Place: Day One (to be released this year) in literalizing the likely end of humanity. This is something more like what we saw in Gareth Edwards's Godzilla, in The Purge films, and I suspect in Alex Garland's upcoming Civil War. It's something, indeed, that M. Night Shyamalan has handled multiple times, in The Happening and most particularly in Knock at the Cabin, which shares a lot of DNA with this film. Enough weird, threatening things happen that the characters are led to believe that NYC is being overtaken by terrorists in some kind of coup. But the film is less concerned with how that seems on a massive scale than in how those events affect the family and their newfound friends, their socializing and their hope, their ability to communicate and rationalize and cooperate.

Apart from the more horrifying elements of crashing freighters and planes and EVs, the film ratchets up its almost unbearable tension on the domestic level, and most of the film's middle comprises the interactions between the house owners, the Black father and daughter (and missing mother) who want to be home, and the house guests, the white family who lie to their children about what's happening and feel entitled to the house and its resources (because they paid for it, dammit). While I don't recall accusations of racism being verbalized in the dialogue, it is exactly this racial tension that electrifies each scene, often squaring Roberts off against Ali in riveting scene after scene. For an "end of the world" film to focus on home invasion and racism is an unusual gamble, and I found it a profoundly successful one.

Add to it some amazing cinematography from Tod Campbell, which would have worked better in cinemas due to his sweeping visual scope and his attention to endless production design details. Add to it Kevin Bacon in a bit part of an off-the-grid doomsday stockpiler who serves as the film's harbinger. Add to it a curiously detached feeling about death -- mass deaths are okay, but the deaths of the characters we know apparently are not -- and this movie shies away from what could be disturbing horror, settling for a much more standard, palatable stock thriller that is nevertheless very effective at what it attempts to do. It's a really extraordinary surprise of a film, not one I expected at all, even while watching! This wonderfully realized puzzle box deserves a watch, and then some. 

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: 3.5 / 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.

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.

First Reformed (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Paul Schrader is not everyone's cuppa. He's not usually my cuppa. And Ethan Hawke sure as shit ain't my cuppa. But First Reformed is one of the craziest, most involving and taxing films this year. You don't feel it coming, but when it hits, it hits hard.

It's very much a story and film by Schrader. It's about an angry man driven to do terrible things because of his perception of the world. Schrader's typically pious protagonist is here, indeed, a pastor (played by Hawke) of an empty, dying historical Dutch church in New York. It would seem that Pastor Toller's theological interests have had a part in the church's dwindling numbers of parishioners, and though his methods are unorthodox, he seeks to keep the church alive. He visits the nearby megachurch (called, blatantly, Abundant Life) to seek support from their pastor, played by a quiet and slightly menacing Cedric the Entertainer. Unfortunately, Abundant Life may not be rich in theological intrigue, but boasts wealth, youth, tradition, and its own history as a stop on the Underground Railroad. First Reformed just can't compete, which is why the larger church owns the smaller.

Just when I thought the film would be about Toller working to save his church and -- it is a Schrader film -- failing or possibly sacrificing himself to do so, we learn more about him. Turns out that Toller had encouraged his son to enlist in the military, only to have his son die in Iraq. Clearly struggling with this, Toller is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), whose radical environmentalist husband needs counseling. Her husband wants her to get an abortion and seeks dangerous answers to stopping pollution and climate change. Upon their meeting, Toller is deeply influenced by the convictions of a man so passionate.

Guilt and fear, love and service brew together in this film into a holy mess of intellectualism. While there's not much to go on emotionally here, we are fed constant ideas of faith and desperation and pain and loss that haunt our minds far more than our hearts. Schrader has never been one for dynamic filmmaking nor movies that grapple our sensibilities. He films here in a monochromatic way, boxing us into a tight aspect ratio, lulling us into a sense of doldrums and boring passivity, before unveiling the horrors that come from deep theological curiosity, complacency, and the sudden spark that feeds radical fire.

Again, this won't be everyone's movie. But for people like me, who have an intense love-hate relationship with churches and want the good while agonizing over the bad, this movie rings terribly true. I found myself gasping at the blatant portraits of extremism being birthed in hallowed halls, clashing ideologies working to better the world and destroy our culture, and of course the tortured souls of those whose desires cannot be reconciled with beliefs before the very worst happens.

IMDb: First Reformed

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Magnificent Seven might be the answer for those of us who weren't totally happy with The Hateful Eight, and while it's a hell of a ride, it's perhaps not as superlative as its title suggests.

I confess, I haven't seen the 1960 original, nor have I seen the Japanese film on which that was based. On its own terms, though, this film still manages to feel like a rehashing of old tropes and images. Westerns are a dying breed (if not dead since 1992's Unforgiven), and it was perhaps too much to ask for a novel Western that isn't paired with horror (The Walking Dead) or science fiction (Cowboys & Aliens). The camera pushes us into a realm of nostalgia with sweeping vistas of the dusty West and a sepia color palette. The story, too, is so simple that it reads more like a fable or tall-tale, which might have been just what writer Nic Pizzolatto (of True Detective fame) intended.

The real pleasure here is the cast, who are so well-suited for their parts that we don't doubt for an instant that any of them belong in their dirty world. Vincent D'Onofrio steals his scenes with humor and some surprising brutality. I was only a little annoyed by the casting of Peter Sarsgaard as the Big Bad, but then, every time he's on screen I feel a little annoyed. Maybe it's his voice. Everyone else was great in their motley crew of bizarre characters, and we even see, if too briefly, badass lone woman in Haley Bennett, heartthrob pioneer in Matt Bomer, and squinty-eyed henchman in Cam Gigandet.

It's a rousing, swashbuckling experience, and it serves as ample distraction for its over-two-hour running time. Explosive and fast, it features some of the better choreographed shoot-outs in recent movies (though nothing beats Anthropoid's climax), and it dishes out plenty of good humor and heart with the action. **SPOILER WARNING** Its surprisingly dour ending feels a bit out of place. It's good, mind, but the extended violent climax might have paid off a tad more had the film played up the camaraderie and humor earlier in the picture. As it is, the ending is moving and sobering; not so much to bring down your action movie high, but not enough to make the movie stick with you after you leave. With a little more heart earlier on, the ending could have been downright cathartic.

That said, the ending could easily set up a sequel. I, for one, would love to see more Red Harvest (and his biceps) on the screen.

IMDb: The Magnificent Seven

Boyhood (2014)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I confess, I was not terribly excited about this movie. All I heard about it was "12 years in the making", "a lifetime effort", blah blah. It sounded like just another all-concept-no-content desperate grab for awards. Add a cast that's relatively unknown and a running time of almost three hours, and this promised to be a daunting prospect, even with the solid direction of Richard Linklater (of Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight fame). But I was hearing enough good things that I felt I would be remiss to ignore it. And I was right.

The concept is, of course, genius. Following a young man's (Ellar Coltrane) life from age 5 to 18, the film shows us the many sides of life as the boy literally grows before our eyes. In an odd, meta fashion, the film is wildly personal and nostalgic because of the many pop culture references since the millennium. We see the kids reading Harry Potter, getting cell phones and laptops, watching Lady Gaga's music videos, and putting up Obama/Biden campaign signs. I smiled, laughed, and shed not a few tears as I saw my own childhood pass before my eyes. As a dear friend of mine said, this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime movie. It is also one that breaks a lot of ground; hopefully that ground will not be mined too much in the future, because the concept is also once-in-a-lifetime. Anything filmed like this in the future will feel too contrived or too desperate. But as it is, this film is fresh, relaxed, haunting, and beautiful.

Coltrane proves himself to be a young superstar, carrying the massive weight of the film on his young shoulders. Patricia Arquette, unfortunately not nearly as known as she should be, similarly masters what I expect to be a Big Break performance; her powerhouse emotional presence in the film is breathtaking. And Ethan Hawke (of whom I have never been a big fan) plays the father with such raw affection and uncharacteristic subtlety that I forgot it was him after a while. This triumvirate of connected, generous, and inspired actors blows me away: how they managed to maintain their obvious comfort and affection for each other and create honest, consistent fictional characters over twelve years, while working on countless other projects, amazes me to no end.

But beyond the concept -- and execution thereof, including pop references for temporal orientation and brilliant characterizations -- the film is profoundly eternal. In what we might call a dysfunctional family, we find shockingly honest emotions and relationships. With a title of Boyhood, I expected rather a lot, and this film delivered. But it carefully and skillfully avoids making any Big Statements about masculinity or manhood or anything like that; while we could certainly interpret a lot of those "lessons" from the picture, the film only really attempts to present an accurate and nonjudgmental snapshot of reality in a specific spectrum of life. Its portrayals are almost immaculately balanced and sensitive; we have both women and men who are, in turns, sympathetic or not, successful or not, loving or not, and everything in-between. Though the titular focus is on a white, middle-class, heteronormative, young man who fits a lot of the stereotypes associated with all those labels, his characterization plays with every expectation of those traits. He plays video games, fights his mother, wants to know his father better, and embodies his privilege in almost every scene; he is also an artist, an independent thinker, a caring and attentive boy who wants to be true to himself and avoid dangerous conformity.

This movie is not a sitcom, and it avoids any type of soap. Linklater (also the writer) instead finds Truth and bravely depicts the proceedings with compassion and understanding, without stooping for sentimentality. The film is both transcendent and real, in all its finely-tuned detail. Boyhood truly changed my life, and that is not a phrase I toss around casually (I think the last experience I had like it was seeing The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway). The ending beautifully wraps up the film in a pseudo-moral moment about how complicated and wonderful life is, in all of the moments that seize us. I couldn't handle it, I was sobbing. Just watch it. Do yourself a handful of favors and go watch it. With a handful of tissues.

IMDb: Boyhood