Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Score: 5 / 5

I hope Rian Johnson makes Knives Out Mysteries the rest of his career. Easily my favorite in what is now a veritable series of consistently excellent films, Wake Up Dead Man is also easily one of my favorites of 2025. 

This time around, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig delivering an inexplicably more interesting character, now three films in) is called to a small town parish in upstate New York. The Gothic setting is heightened by a new murder mystery: Reverend Wicks (gruff Josh Brolin), a charismatic and emotionally abusive monsignor dies, mysteriously and alone in a small closet adjacent to the sanctuary where he had been performing a Good Friday service. Johnson spends the entire first act of this five-act narrative in the parish community, so we get to know the dynamics at work first. Wicks gets a reassigned assistant pastor, a young former boxer (!) named Duplencity (a tortured Josh O'Connor), whose dark past and tendency toward violence make him all the more interesting to a burgeoning cult leader like Wicks. The parishioners are all naturally highly suspicious, including Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Cailee Spaeny, and of course Glenn Close as the devout and imperious right-hand woman of the head priest. In Johnson's capable imagination, however, their likely guilt isn't just a matter of fact; he forces us to consider, with each, the very realistic reasons they might fall prey to a toxic gospel, and how similarly we might do the same.

See, Johnson is of course doing an Agatha Christie thing, but he's also very much doing an America-in-the-2020s thing with these movies. In the first, he roasted insular families of wealth and the ways in which they prey on marginalized workers in a cruel twist of murder mysteries and legacy wealth; in the second, he skewered a wider swath of privileged people in the category of being "stupid rich" and how they prey on each other in a post-moralistic parable about capitalism. But now we shift -- though the motivation may still be about money -- to the realm of faith. Karl Marx famously called religion "the opium of the people," and Johnson seems eager to inject us with a counterdrug. In an age of fascists taking power in the "land of the free," it's telling that Johnson wants us to consider how religious conservatism and sociopolitical desperation leads to cults of personality.

Yet rather than merely scorching the devout -- or, indeed, painting this as a full-blown cult, a la Kevin Williamson's series The Following -- Johnson uses this focus to mine an opportunity. Rather than lambasting the faithful as weak or ignorant, much less willfully wicked, he develops the characters toward each other, reminding them (and us) of commonalities rather than irreconcilable differences.

Visually, Johnson hasn't been this strong since The Last Jedi. He and cinematographer Steve Yedlin create real magic with their lighting in this film, evoking Dutch Golden Age paintings with a dash of fever-dream lighting technique. Thick atmosphere and nebulous backgrounds are repeatedly pierced by golden, amber, or even white light through various doorways associated with life and death. The first especial time I noticed the gorgeous feast of color and light was, indeed, when Blanc arrives to the church at the start of the second act, and his shadow is superimposed over the bare wall over the shoulder of the man who needs him most. This motif is repeated twice in the film, for pointed thematic effect.

And indeed help is needed. The cast of murderous characters share something in common: not love of money, or paranoid false friendships, or even monstrous secrets, but in fact their anger. These characters, though desperate for healing, belonging, and purpose, all share a penchant for anger in its various forms. While Johnson's messaging, by film's end, is demonstrably about understanding other perspectives, de-escalating violence, and a counter-instinctive type of empathy, it's fair to say his approach to this material feels like his own angriest yet. Easily the richest thematic yarn he's yet spun in this franchise -- maybe ever -- Wake Up Dead Man also features an aggressive visual dynamic that demands to be see on as large a screen as possible, and with the best sound system. It's a crying shame so many people will watch this on phone screens.

I don't think I could accurately recount the plot to you, and I've seen it twice now. Johnson's plots, however, are intentionally unpredictable/unsolvable. His enduring legacy with these Benoit Blanc mysteries is more about why these murders happen than just about who dunnit. You know? Blanc even riffs on a Mulder and Scully dynamic with his young priest friend, essentially pairing a man of science with a man of faith as they grapple with inhumane questions. In Johnson's masterful language, they reach some profound epiphanies that will leave you shaken. Murder will always out; the battle for the soul, however, takes center stage in the best Knives Out mystery yet.

The Deliverance (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In 2011, Latoya Ammons moved into a Gary, Indiana, rental house with her family, and they soon experienced strange and disturbing phenomena that led them to contact a priest, who exorcised the house. After multiple attempts, the family relocated to Indianapolis, where the suspected haunting activity did not pursue them. The story gained notoriety in 2014 (when I heard about it, having moved to nearby Michigan City that year) when the Indianapolis Star published a story and photos of the alleged haunting. Notably, the police chief believed that supernatural events were indeed happening in the "Demon House," adding credibility to the tale. Naysayers flocked, criticizing Latoya for faking it to avoid house payments, to cover up child abuse, and to gain money for the publicity. The whole affair smacks of racism and classism, but the question is really who stood to gain (and what) from the hubbub, a question that leaves more concerns than answers in its wake.

When Lee Daniels was announced to head up a dramatic adaptation of these events, I was thrilled. Daniels has a very specific aesthetic and oeuvre, and like his style or not, he never holds back his punches. He also demonstrates a keen eye when it comes to moments of slippage and fluidity in intersectional social problems, as seen in Precious, The Paperboy, Shadowboxer, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and even that odd ensemble piece The Butler. He'd surely handle the material with sensitive care around issues of addiction, poverty, racialized housing, and child abuse, while dramatizing it with appropriately suburban Gothic flair. Right?

Well, no, actually. The Deliverance, as awfully titled as it is, manages to offer a lot of key moments that all deserve special attention -- including visits from a troublesome CPS agent (Mo'Nique) and more -- and skirts them in order to deliver (ha ha) what it thinks are profound and effective scares. Daniels doesn't know how to craft a horror atmosphere and maintain it for two hours, and that ineptitude is on full display here. A few scares are fun, but they are all too familiar and most are outright stolen tropes from other, better possession films. Characters clambering up walls, bodies contorting with grisly sound effects, children spewing profanities ad nauseam; it's all here and then some, with pedestrian effects and weak follow-through on what should be a waking nightmare.

But the horror in this story isn't just what Daniels pulls out of his magic hat in the film's latter half. Its first half has some really gripping interracial family drama rooted in intergenerational trauma and attempts to overcome institutional oppression. The film works best in the first half, when Daniels clearly knows he's one of the best at what he does. His incredible cast, including Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Glenn Close all at the tops of their games, pull no stops in their raw, often brutal encounters with each other. Day, playing Ebony Jackson as the stand-in for a much-fictionalized Ammons, carries most of the film on her capable shoulders, injecting gravitas and earned weight to her fight with the demons in her life: addiction, jobs, finances, supporting her unconventional family. She's raising three kids alone until her mother, recently diagnosed with cancer, moves in with them. Her mother (Close, in a gobsmacking performance) is a chain-smoking born-again Christian who flirts too much with the young men at her clinic, and seems intent to atone for her bad motherhood by being a present and mindful grandmother. It would be a lot for anyone to handle, and did I mention that Ebony is alcoholic?

I expected Daniels and his writers to lean into the family drama as the source of possible horror. Are the hauntings products of Day's drunken haze? Is she the one abusing her children, not ghosts or demons? Is the stress of their domesticity leeching the lives of her children away despite her best efforts? When will the next child be struck, the next appliance futz out, the next knock at the door take away her family? Daniels knows melodrama and he can deftly communicate the complex intangibles of oppressive -isms, and he clearly wanted this story to feed off that, making it the Midwestern Gothic version of OJ Simpson's crime in its acute intersection of social ills. Let the supernatural stuff go by the wayside, like in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, wherein the mere possibility of supernatural horror slides under the audience's consciousness even as its main plot takes place in a courtroom.

Alas, the producers or Netflix or whoever seem to have thwarted his efforts. The film raises clear flags in moments when Daniels obviously had his vision wrenched from his grasp, usually when the "scares" occur with unfortunately underperforming effects and efficacy. By the time it's obvious The Deliverance is about a literal demon preying on Ebony and her family, the grotesque appeal of the film wanes as it teeters into rote generic steps, plodding safely to its most obvious denouement. I suspect the kids in a normal Daniels film would face much more devastating threats in the real world than against demons climbing up from hell, and we'd have a much more satisfying film had he been able to focus in on what he does best. Instead, we're given a middling effort that still is very much worth watching, if only to see Glenn Close sewing in tracks on Andra Day's head!

Heart of Stone (2023)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Gal Gadot is an arresting screen presence and a delight to watch doing just about anything, but Heart of Stone is not the kind of action vehicle I'll ever want to rewatch. Netflix clearly wants this to be the start of a new espionage/action series with bankable stars, and for viewers who just want to watch pretty people hop around the globe and blow things up, it arguably fits the bill. But it's hard, while watching, not to compare it constantly to other, better films in the same vein. Its nonsensical screenplay and peripatetic editing belie a film that is wildly over-produced, calculated to within an inch of its life to be as flat and un-dynamic as possible. And not in a campy, metafictional, or ironic way.

Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a new MI6 technician who, in the opening sequence, is forced into the field for the first time. Her team, attempting to extract an arms dealer in the Italian Alps, fails after an extended and mishandled chase; Stone herself succeeds in saving her operational contact, but in doing so almost reveals that she is in fact a seasoned agent secretly working for the Charter, a top-secret global cabal of peacekeepers. Returning to London, she reports to her Charter overseer -- they all have annoying code names but the boss is played by Sophie Okonedo, who I'd also usually watch do anything, but here she acts bored and confused -- and we're given a chance to catch up on some dubious exposition.

The Charter uses a unique computer with artificial intelligence that can hack apparently any digital device, and it's called "the Heart" because of course it is. Stone is suspicious of a hacker she encountered on the mission -- though the significance of most characters in the film are about as cursory as this, laughably -- and follows her to Lisbon, where teammate Parker (Jamie Dornan, again, a handsome and talented screen presence utterly wasted here) reveals he's working with the hacker and murders their team and poisons Stone with a device meant to hack and infiltrate the Heart. Then begins the second half of the film, which features more globetrotting and mindless action and betrayals and a happy ending.

Unlike comparable films like Mission: Impossible and the James Bond series, Heart of Stone has no aesthetic or stylized interest in its many locations, making everything from Portugal to Senegal to Iceland look both similar and bland. It's surprising because director Tom Harper also helmed The Aeronauts, which was visually stunning. The film treats its own plot much the same way, as people switch allegiances faster than the dialogue can maintain, and the bits of history we learn about the characters make more plot holes. Stone was recruited when she was only twenty years old, and we are never told what her training might have been before or afterward. The Heart works through the hands of its primary operator, cheekily codenamed "Jack of Hearts," who manipulates its digital screens in real space a la Minority Report or Iron Man any other too-futuristic sci-fi media that isn't meant to be realistic or contemporary. And, frankly, the overuse of yet another AI that needs to be protected and/or stopped reached its peak earlier this year with Dead Reckoning, and we really don't want more stories like this unless it can provide something more interesting or timely.

I so disliked this mess of a movie, I'll just list my other main complaints out of context, because it's time to wrap this up. Gadot's physicality isn't highlighted by fight choreography nor the cinematography. Despite attempting relevancy through its use of AI concerns, the film briefly and sporadically hints at concepts like determinism and themes of philosophy without actually engaging in those fraught discussions, and utterly fails to demonstrate even how the Heart works to save lives. Stone never questions the methods or even goals of the Charter, though she repeatedly interrogates Parker and the hacker about their desires to eliminate their enemies. And nobody -- nobody -- questions the Heart's mass surveillance as a potentially fascistic threat in the wrong hands, which it very well may be at present. And when the movie finally suggests the Charter isn't always so great, it blames its leader for her mistakes before essentially killing off most characters and setting Stone up with a new team at film's end. So the movie is not so subtly pro-surveillance state, and I guess pro-feminist, but one of those is years too late and the other is terrifyingly close to where we're headed. Let's not encourage dangerous ideas and cinematic incompetence by continuing this woefully inept IP.

Four Good Days (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

In the tradition of parent-child trauma-dramas that has spiked in recent years, Four Good Days pits the unlikely duo of Glenn Close and Mila Kunis together in a battle of wits, heart, and drugs. It doesn't quite reach levels unseen in the sub-genre, and it hits pretty much all the predictable milestones until its climax. Even in that, it sacrifices plumbing the depths of dramatic insight in favor of a few didactic stingers and a frantic attempt at kinetic energy otherwise lacking from the film. But those are only really criticisms if you feel that these character dramas -- rather, vehicles for stars -- actually require a plot with momentum. The creators of Ben is Back certainly did.

And yet this movie is only typically like that picture, or the similar Beautiful Boy. The major difference is, obviously, that this movie centers on and almost exclusively considers two women in impossible circumstances. Molly (an almost unrecognizable Kunis) has been through rehab no fewer than fourteen times, and so when she shows up at her mother's doorstep, we can see the history of pain, mistrust, and evaporated love between the two. This is largely because Deb is played by Close, a master of single-look character studies, whose guarded stillness in contrast with the daughter's intoxicated mannerisms tell us chapters worth of backstory in moments. Deb gives Molly anything but a warm welcome, and the two clearly have an understood series of tough boundaries, no doubt due to prior problems with stealing and lying and endangerment.

Deb's heart, however, won't have it, and as Molly sleeps outside on the cold stones, her mother paces indoors and watches her. She wants to believe her daughter is serious about getting clean this time, just as Molly is desperate to get inside the house. In the morning, Deb gets her coffee and promptly takes her to a detox facility. They both know the routine a little too well, and it's all a bit cold. Deb certainly doesn't want to get her hopes up, but she senses something might be different this time. Is it only her weary, wishful thinking?

After three days in the facility, Deb picks up Molly and the doctor makes a shocking offer: an opioid antagonist. Essentially a monthly shot that will prevent Molly from getting high -- which begs the question from ignorant me, won't an addict still try and then overdose after not getting high? -- both Deb and Molly leap at the opportunity. Or at least, they dare to hope this might finally work. The doctor says that Molly must stay clean four more days; that will allow her body to prepare for the shot. Deb brings Molly home with her, and so begins the bulk of the film. It's a cat-and-mouse game of suspicious stares, tense conversations, and forced attempts at normalcy. Suitably hard to watch, the anxious energy the film taps into is firmly rooted in the maternal home, a strange domestic thriller without action but with a lot of heightened emotions and deadly consequences.

The screenplay by director Rodrigo Garcia and reporter Eli Saslow (who wrote the 2016 article that inspired this film), despite often engaging in brutal and honest discussions as well as situations, never quite manages to balance itself. Drifting from heavy-handed and sometimes groan-inducing symbols (an unfinished puzzle in the garage) to otherwise brilliant moments of unspoken tenderness (Deb is an esthetician and provides her services to her daughter in their most intimate scene), the movie only really works because of the dedication and remarkable skills of its cast. Close defies powerful urges to either hang her daughter out to dry or embrace her while knowing she'll pay for it. And Kunis really shows us her mettle as a serious actress, balancing desperation with manipulative ferocity and then shifting to psychological and bodily agony; her unexpected gentle moments hit with the same force as her feral scenes.

The powers of hope and love and perseverance are what make this movie so haunting, memorable, and important. And while that could be said of any of its ilk, at least this one gives us some Glenn Close to put in our eyes. For as long as your eyes aren't pooling with tears.

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the most polarizing books of the decade, J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published the summer before the 2016 election and gained surprising momentum when it became apparent Donald Trump would step into the presidency. Book clubs ate it up and it was added to syllabi in classrooms and seminars all over the country; it hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list in August of that year, and again in January. Many people took it as a gospel account of how and why poorer, working-class white people came out in droves to vote red, and exactly how powerful the invisible masses of Rust Belt Americana could be, given proper motivation. It seemed to explain a culture alien to large areas of the continental U.S. in ways that slyly slid around more clearly controversial topics like race and shied away from definitive political ideology. And in its seductive pathos, it raised more than a few hackles from Appalachians; in its alluring ethos, it inspired ire and scorn from those disillusioned by its championing of the American Dream.

How do you turn a book like this into a film? Well, first you hire a director known for tackling controversial topics like The Da Vinci Code and who has carved a place for himself as a strong and prolific "American" filmmaker; it helps that Ron Howard's introduction to popular culture came through the Andy Griffith Show. Then you hire Vanessa Taylor as a screenwriter whose brief list of accomplished work is gobsmackingly varied (Hope Springs, Aladdin, The Shape of Water, and Game of Thrones). Finally, you cast two of the biggest names in acting to lead the film in roles that, to a reader, might be a tad surprising as main characters.

The memoir primarily works, as you might guess, as an elegy: it paints a picture of a dying or even dead Appalachia, autopsying it to analyze social rot, and generally condemning a region for not saving itself even as Vance mourns the circumstances that brought his family and friends low. Debates rage about the author's use of circular logic, his dubious claims of authority in making his conclusions, and his gross use of broad generalizations based on limited and fairly privileged personal experience. But I don't want to spend too much time critiquing the book here, because the movie ultimately doesn't share a lot of what makes the book so damned controversial.

Indeed, Howard and Taylor have adapted Hillbilly Elegy in ways that, while not necessarily surprising in terms of narrative, definitely change the rhetorical impact on its audience. Cutting out many of Vance's masturbatory passages describing his feelings about everything from chicken decapitation to Japanese crotch rockets, the film takes as its focus the journey that young, precocious JD (I'll refer to JD as the dramatized character, Vance as the real-life author) undergoes. Yes, this is a bildungsroman in the worst way, and we can scarcely deny the power of poverty porn in contemporary storytelling. We are all guilty of indulging to some extent, and JD's journey from a muddy swimming hole in Kentucky through decaying Ohio suburbs and finally to the pristine halls of Yale can quietly win over even the most guarded viewer.

This may be partly due to the eminent wonder of our two leading women, both of whom are popularly recognized for their socially and politically left-leaning work. Amy Adams, increasingly playing nuanced and thankless roles to magnificent effect, plays Bev, JD's mother, who would sound like a shoehorned welfare queen trope if I described her. Bev's drug abuse has made her an unreliable and ineffective mother, despite her strong beliefs about family duty and loyalty; no matter how old JD gets, his mother will constantly haunt his steps, invariably drawing his mind to the dangers awaiting him if he does not overcome his past. An almost unrecognizable Glenn Close, on the other hand, plays Mamaw, JD's maternal grandmother, letting out her full acting powers on a character that appears to be a caricature to anyone not familiar with Appalachian culture; those of us with experience will recognize the character immediately, and Close's powerhouse performance can then be seen as the force of nature it is. Without sacrificing her beliefs or values, Mamaw has almost single-handedly taken it upon herself to make life better for her grandchildren, raising them far from their ancestral home and instilling values to help them succeed in a world that would otherwise ignore their existence.

In case you couldn't tell, this movie is almost impossible to discuss without bearing lots of personal baggage, but decrying it without seeing it -- without trying to understand what it's doing -- is intellectually lazy and, I'd argue, deeply damaging to the art and the people it purports to represent. I've seen countless people call this movie offensive and inaccurate because that's what they've heard about the book. This movie is not the book. The closest it comes is in its plot, writ large, which dramatizes the sort of "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" upward climb that comprises the American Dream. And while that is of course a dangerous story to praise, I do think this movie invites more complex discussions about why the American Dream myth is problematic than we've had, culturally, in many years.

My major takeaways from the film were two amazing performances of characters so rarely seen in movies, a story of two amazing women and their impact on a troubled young man, and the stereotypically inspiring story of what you can do to better your life and the lives of your family if you have the opportunity. Its sense of place is authentic and infectious. Its sense of hope and trauma and joy and sorrow is more or less universal, even if the specifics sorely limit its actual scope. The film, wisely, avoids making any sweeping statements about the political or social makeup of impoverished Rust Belt blue-collar Republicans; in avoiding these troubling tendencies by Vance, Howard and Taylor have nonverbally and gracefully dismissed many of his published conclusions.

I would have preferred this film, however, to more actively engage the inherent absurdity of some of the elements it dramatizes. This may have given the film a clearer aesthetic and given it a purpose for existing (beyond being a Hallmark-level emotional journey from family trauma to self-help). Often during the film, I felt the urge to guffaw or even laugh aloud, but choked it down, feeling that it would be inappropriate of me, though I spent the formative years of my young adulthood in southern West Virginia and knew full well what was so funny and relatable about the portrayed drama. Like other movies about such a specific demographic, it can be difficult to know when, as an audience, we are appropriating their humor or appreciating it, laughing with them or laughing at them. My mind immediately goes to Lee Daniels's Precious or the transgressive works of John Waters, the kind of postmodern gothic that flirts with exploitation even as it revels in its unique power. That aesthetic would have been a more fascinating approach, for me, carrying more ideological possibilities and complexity.

The Wife (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Damn, I wish Glenn Close made more movies.

Here, she plays Joan Castleman, the intelligent, dutiful, and endlessly stoic woman behind a Great Man, her husband, Joe. About to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Joe whisks his wife away to Stockholm for the ceremonies. They bring their son -- himself a struggling writer -- and are forced to tear themselves away from a very pregnant daughter. Unfortunately, the strain of Joe's narcissism reaches an unbearable tension, and Joan is forced to make some wrenching decisions about her work, her family, and her life.

During the course of its too-brief 100 minutes, The Wife dramatizes the energetic unraveling of many years of marriage in a way that is not terribly gimmicky, though it certainly stretches credulity in its efforts to craft a realistic chamber piece. The filmmakers balance expertly crafted drama with melancholic intervals that flash back to what we expect to be a happier time. We quickly learn, however, that in the trials of love and ambition, there can be only one victor.

To say more about the plot would be to rob the film's great pleasure. Not the plot, mind, but rather how the slowly unraveling plot informs our understanding of Glenn Close's amazing performance as the (no less amazingly written) wife. She is far more than meets the eye, of course, and though this is no thriller, shocked gasps whistled through the theater multiple times as we saw her character revealed incrementally.

And though the film clearly prefers Joan to Joe, Jonathan Pryce delivers an awesome performance in a wholly thankless role as the to-be laureate. To call him monstrous might be fitting, once we learn his true designs, but painting these characters in broad strokes is to destroy the finer points of the film. While we may at times be frustrated with these characters for doing (or not doing) what we want, the film reminds us several times -- in emotionally jarring moments of psychological whiplash -- that the people we love are never stock characters. To label these people is to dehumanize them, and us by extension. Even those we love the most can and will hurt us the most; the question is how we respond.

P.S.: The only reason I cannot award this film full marks is that Max Irons, playing their Hamlet-like son, never looks good. In fact, I can scarcely imagine how much effort went into making him look so bad. For shame.

IMDb: The Wife

The Girl with All the Gifts (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Just around the time you think there's no life left in the zombie movie, another one rises. Of course, we may play fast and loose with what constitutes a "zombie", be it a disease or curse, afflicting the living or the dead, humans or otherwise, globally or locally. But there are tropes and themes that tend to stick with the genre, and The Girl with All the Gifts fits the bill. In the near future, a fungal disease has ravaged humanity, turning people into mindless cannibalistic monsters called "hungries." The pockets of militarized survivors search desperately for a cure or vaccine, and their only hope lies with second-generation children who maintain the ability to speak and think. They also, however, crave flesh and will turn ravenous if humans nearby do not mask their scent with a special medical gel.

These children have become test subjects in a frightful bunker, researched and tested by scientists and rigidly controlled by soldiers. They are taught and raised by a motherly woman named Helen (Quantum of Solace and Clash of the Titans star Gemma Arterton). Her favorite pupil is our protagonist, young Melanie (played with astonishing skill by Sennia Nanua), whose aptitude and intelligence outshine the others and whose love for Helen provides the film's heart. But their affection is not without its difficulties, and others have noticed Melanie's brilliance. Dr. Caldwell (played by the always perfect Glenn Close), in charge of finding a cure, also has her eye on Melanie though her attention is purely scientific. Cold and calculating, we quickly learn she has been experimenting on the children -- "experimenting" here meaning "murdering by removing their nervous system" -- and Melanie is next up on her slab. Helen fights back but is quickly disarmed; when has going up against Glenn Close ever been a good idea?

Thankfully for Melanie, the zombies choose that moment to overrun the compound. For us zombie aficionados, this movie may not take the cake. But it boasts some impressive and ingenious devices that set it apart from the slew of similar flicks. Its British setting recalls 28 Days Later, the bleak violence reminds us of The Walking Dead, and the fast-moving animalistic "hungries" are of the same cloth as those in World War Z. This movie is not original in those ways, but it features an unusually intelligent screenplay that meditates on moral dilemmas and complex characters. It relies on practical effects and real people under zombie getup, not relying on CGI and excessive, weightless monsters. Its long-shots, especially the one when Melanie and Helen try to escape the compound as it falls to the hungries, are exquisitely choreographed, and the set designs are so fabulous it's easy to get lost in the world of the movie.

And that's just the first half of the film! After that, well, you're on your own.

I haven't read the book by M.R. Carey, but I noticed he also wrote the screenplay, and it is a magnificent introduction between us. Besides its complicated characters and references to other zombie media, the movie constantly challenges its genre. Black humor and body horror are juxtaposed with romance and science fiction, all mashed up with social commentary, environmentalism, and moral chaos in an otherwise post-apocalyptic coming-of-age drama about a young woman of color. What else could you want? Oh, and just wait for the ending. It turns the tables so fast, you'll be knocked off your ass.

IMDb: The Girl with All the Gifts

Anesthesia (2015)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The thing about ensemble dramas is that we love them. Even when they're not great, we get pulled in by the talent and hope the movie works too. Tim Blake Nelson tries again here to be the writer and director of a sprawling film highlighting the interconnected nature of human life, and this time he assembles the cast to make it worth a watch. It's just too bad his work doesn't provide a better foundation for them.

It would seem that Anesthesia might concern a feeling of numbness in modern life, a sort of artificial coping mechanism to deal with the pains of our existence. To some extent, Nelson's film does explore those ideas. We have a philosophy professor (Sam Waterston) preparing for retirement and contemplating his life's work as he aims for purpose- or intent-driven behaviors and one of his students (Kristen Stewart) who harms herself. We have an alcoholic housewife (Gretchen Mol) and mother of two trying to be the picture-perfect school mom, though her husband (Corey Stoll) is having an affair somewhere in town. We have an intelligent but failed writer (Nelson himself) and his children who are all fighting different addictions while his wife confronts cancer. It's a messy ensemble, and the actors fir their parts perfectly, performing with conviction and passion.

But though they're all trying to anesthetize themselves, Nelson does the exact opposite for us, plucking our heartstrings with wild abandon and forcing us to feel every little sting. Uncomfortably funny but comically sad, the whole enterprise feels underbaked. Contrived at best, the plot feels like Crash but cheaper and simpler and with a thesaurus. Waxing philosophic at every turn, the film meanders with a nihilistic goal, as its various themes of coming of age, addiction, fatality, depression, purpose, fidelity, and of course DEATH get pounded into our ears. Waterston carries the real weight here along with Stewart, as they deliver lengthy, complex monologues about the pains and purposes of life.

While I ordinarily like this heavy, heady stuff, here there is so little dramatic meat to feast on that the monologues feel gimmicky and cruel, a cerebral venture without focus. It tries so hard to make us empathize with its characters, but ultimately the film doesn't let us know much about the characters beyond their spotlight moments of revelation. They quickly become archetypes, caricatures of experimental teens, troubled spouses, struggling addicts, and none of them stick in your mind once the credits start rolling. One character refers to an "echo chamber", and that is an unfortunate but apt description of this film.

IMDb: Anesthesia

The Stepford Wives (2004)

Score: 4 / 5

Almost everyone hates this film -- even people who were a part of it -- and frankly I don't understand why. The "Stepford wife" has become a cultural reference point in part because of its many manifestations over the last forty years, and this film is a brave, intelligent addition to their ranks. Does it have its problems? Yes, and arguably more than enough. But I think the critical failure of this film boils down to problems with the critics, not the film.

Ira Levin's (author of Rosemary's Baby and Deathtrap) 1972 novel, a satirical thriller about gender norms in marital relationships, was famously adapted into a 1975 sci-fi thriller film directed by Brian Forbes. There have been at least three unsuccessful attempts at sequels, but the concept has rooted in our minds, sometimes leading us to accuse men of creating their own Stepford wives (I remember hearing Katie Holmes called one during her time with Tom Cruise). The story has been battled out among audiences as being either hopelessly misogynist or subversively feminist with no clear consensus, though I've only ever thought of it as a feminist effort. A big part of the "thrilling" element of the novel and first film is that it reveals to us the dangerous imbalance of gender power and the historically oppressive control of men especially in the institution of marriage. When we see our own norms exaggerated and taken to their extreme limits, we see the dangers of our own behavior, and it scares the hell out of us.

Frank Oz's 2004 remake of the film takes a very different tone from previous adaptations as well as the source material. Screenwriter Paul Rudnick injects a fierce humor into the dialogue that both heightens and trivializes the proceedings; that's not something we see in many films, especially not successfully. Oz parallels Rudnick's incredible two-tone aesthetic in striking visual fashion, moving the 70s housewife trope into a futuristic yet traditional setting. His eye for lurid colors and rigid patterns creates a hypnotic effect, concurrently enchanting and disturbing our expectations of wealthy suburbia. Finally, the actors -- including Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Roger Bart, Christopher Walken, and Glenn Close -- provide the glue that pulls these complicated paradoxical stylizations together: Camp. Their performances are so wildly ostentatious that they become grotesques in Oz's world of symbols and sensations.

Part of the problem in discussing this film is that it fuses genres, and I've noticed that that seems to negatively affect some critics. In this case, our expectations for another thriller film are cast off because of the humor, our expectations for camp are conflicted because of the layered social commentary, and our expectations for comedy are darkened by the unsettling nature of the tale. That, and camp has always been hit-or-miss with critics (and artists). Some "get it," some don't. And our camp sensibility has changed, from Bride of Frankenstein (1935) to Burlesque (2010); some people (both audiences and artists) view camp as disturbing and edgy, others as funny and carefree. But camp isn't the same down the line, and style is a difficult thing for most critics to, well, criticize, because of its individual and intimate nature. The camp in this film feels funny most of the time, but I find it disturbing because, like Ira Levin's vision of Stepford, the bright facades mask a dark secret.

Besides the main conflict of feminist vs. misogynist in critical appraisals of the film, even secondary elements aren't black and white (or yellow and pink, to fit the palette). Bette Midler plays a "normal" woman, working as a writer, with frizzy hair, glasses, dark clothes, big teeth, and meat on her bones; she challenges her husband and her mothering duties at every turn while living a life drastically apart from the neighborhood. Her feminist energy, however, is ultimately turned into hyper-feminine, submissive trope of domesticity. Roger Bart plays the (original to this film) urban gay partner of a Stepford resident, and their relationship is painted as stereotypically as most: Bart is flamboyant and feminine while his partner is masculine and distant. But that trope becomes complicated when, after he becomes a Stepford "wife", he runs for a Republican political office; even after he is returned to normal, he declares himself an Independent. Whatever our opinions of these character developments, one thing is strikingly clear about this film: Nothing is what it seems, and no norm depicted in the film is left undisturbed. Even the comedy/thriller genre ambiguity is significant in this way; I would argue that this film is more effective, then, than the 1975 straight thriller.

One of my favorite elements of the film is the simple fact that, for all its commentary on varied facets of life, it doesn't really say anything definitive about them. This film is not propaganda. It has no definite moral, no lessons to impart. It does, however, aggressively open doors to all kinds of conversation. Whether we want to talk about interior design or whitewashed casts, the morality of insanity or marital power struggles, this film presents us with complicated, layered material that just begs for discussion. It pushes boundaries, subverts its own images, characters, and plot devices, and challenges us to think. In fact, maybe it does teach us a lesson: Whatever happens, think independently, lest we all become Stepford wives.

IMDb: The Stepford Wives

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Score: 4 / 5

I usually react badly when people try to argue that films are "simply" escapist ventures. Firstly, there's nothing really wrong with escapism, though I think a tendency for it leads to bad art. Secondly, there's nothing simple about filmmaking. Or film viewing, for that matter. And a desire to escape from reality into a world that becomes real to many viewers is a very complicated process. But as I watched smiling audience members walk out after Marvel's newest blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, the first word that crossed my mind was "escapism". And I was smiling too.

Due, no doubt, to any number of circumstances, superhero movies seem to have been getting darker and heavier over the last few years. Blame Christopher Nolan, postmodern nihilism, or the degradation of American youth, but it's no coincidence that superhero films seem to be growing more tragic in nature. Besides the subject matter that always includes the extinction of humans or the dissolution of Earth, just look at the color palette for Thor and compare it to its sequel. Or Captain America. And consider the titles of these sequels: The Dark World, The Winter Soldier. They grow bleak, because for some reason each installment must be a bigger, "better" challenge to overcome, and one that invariably makes a lot of rubble.

So Guardians proved quite the surprise for me. I usually prefer the darker-toned films of the last few years to comedies, but frankly I've been getting tired of them. The sheer optimism and glee in this film had me smiling through the whole damn thing. And lots of that comes from the director, James Gunn, who handles the (no less threatening than in other Marvel films) presence of multiple scheming, destructive villains with grace and style. While he eventually gives in to weak battle sequences typical of superhero finales, he also has an eye for lovely visuals. And I'm not talking about colossal buildings falling down, nauseating battles in aircraft, or legions of alien armies hammering it out; these elements are in the film but are hardly the photographic focus. The camera views the proceedings with a particularly human eye (with a few spectacle-oriented moments of exception, of course), carefully focusing attention on the cast of characters. Granted, there are so many characters that it is a bit tricky to keep them all straight, but eventually I got the hang of it.

For an ensemble superhero film with almost too many special effects, the real joy here is the acting. While I have never read these comics and so didn't know any of these characters previously, the screenwriters and actors obviously worked together to create strong, sympathetic characters that are both touching and funny. Chris Pratt proves quite capable of heavyweight protagonist flair, and with a sizzling heroic body to boot (which he has sported before, people, in Zero Dark Thirty. Stop acting like this is a new thing). Zoe Saldana peers through her greenface with her usual zest, and even Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel shine in their moments, though their faces never show at all. My favorite moments, however, belong to Benicio Del Toro, who briefly shows his fabulous side in a turn as the Collector. While I worship Glenn Close, who plays Nova Prime, I don't entirely know why she was in the film; her role is so brief and unnecessary to the plot that she feels a little wasted, and for that matter, so does John C. Reilly. But I'll stop complaining because Close needs to be on screen more, period.

Amidst the sparkling energy and great comedic timing, we have a lot of empty visuals and tons of action without much accompanying drama. That seems to be the direction a lot of recent action films are headed, and that's why I usually prefer the darker stuff: the action has accompanying emotional weight and purpose, if sometimes a bit too much. But Guardians provides a truly giddy release from that, and it is Welcome, not least because its characters are assembled in a refreshingly queer narrative of appreciating and valuing individual difference. There isn't really the level of proud indulgence or selfish sacrifice that we find in too many other action-film heroes. Hopefully future Marvel installments can retain this sincere optimism while also providing just a little more emotional connection.


IMDb: Guardians of the Galaxy