Cruella (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

We should have expected something like this after the financial success of Maleficent, though it's a bit surprising how late this is in coming. Not that an origin story for one of Disney's most iconic villains is ever to be expected, Cruella is still a wickedly good time at the movies. While it will have its detractors -- not the least of which vocally clamor against all live-action remakes, reimaginings, and sequels of beloved classics -- this is one case where I'm not sure that particular complaint is warranted. This is no mere origin story; in fact, it hardly even approaches the basic questions about the mad villainess. Why does she so detest nuclear families, and why does she want to murder 99 puppies?

Actually, if anything, this film answers the first of those questions. Cruella, or rather Estella, is a dog-loving, precocious child of a poor laundrywoman who is killed under suspicious circumstances at a wealthy manor. Newly orphaned, the Dickensian girl rallies herself and debuts as a sassy, spunky rebel with more bite than bark. Thieving on the street with her new friends Jasper and Horace, the trio come of age together and live in a crumbling flat by night while scamming the unwitting by day. But Estella (Emma Stone) is a fashion designer, and finally gets a job at the luxurious Liberty department store. Failing as a maid, she drunkenly reworks a window display that catches the eye of one Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), a veritable Dragon Lady and primary vendor of the store.

In many ways, this is indeed an origin story, and it checks all the boxes of that narrative style in the sort of exposition-heavy, oddly fractured yet annoyingly coherent way that has become increasingly common. I'll never quite understand the need for these stories for iconic characters who really don't need them, but there is a basic satisfaction in seeing new performers and designers put fresh spins on old ideas. And while this isn't the same kind of story as Maleficent, which completely rewrites the character to be essentially and actively good, it's more like Broadway's Wicked or even Venom in that, while explaining her eccentricities away, the movie still respects and embraces the inherent madness and dangerousness that makes its antihero a true, real villain. I suppose, with that in mind, this movie is less an origin story and more along the lines of giving the Devil his due. Or, rather, her due.

In what becomes a crime-comedy mash-up of The Devil Wears Prada and Joker, our female fashionistas engage in heist after chase after publicity terrorism. Estella, now working for the abusive and manipulative Baroness, is determined to dethrone the bitch and take her place as London's premier designer. And yet, as in Phantom Thread and others, the Baroness is also the closest thing to a mentor (and mother?) that Estella has; moreover, even as Estella sabotages the Baroness's public appearances, the Baroness seems to feel that more lines are being crossed than just those between a boss and employee. While the film certainly never covers up the fact that Cruella is not a good person, and is capable of pretty rotten behaviors, we're constantly reminded that the Baroness is far worse; Cruella's intense determination to punish a wicked overlord intersects with her desire to be the best in the biz, and that combination reveals psychological depth to her character that is never fully explored by the film.

Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya and 2011's Fright Night, a personal favorite) directs this movie with a similar panache and irreverent style he's used before. Lengthy sequences match up with a bombastic and loud soundtrack packed with upbeat, recognizable hits like in an Edgar Wright movie. Cold lighting and stark sets frame costumes that wear actors, and yet everyone in this movie leans into the strange aesthetic. Whirling cinematography and nauseatingly choppy editing notwithstanding -- more than once during the two-and-a-quarter-hour feature I had to look away just to reorient myself -- its kinetic energy cannot be denied. And the movie looks great the whole time, even when we're not quite sure if it's doing anything substantial. Then again, the work here by costumer Jenny Beavan (Mad Max: Fury Road, Sense & Sensibility, Gosford Park, and countless others) is always doing substantial work, and I'd have watched it all again immediately to be able to stare at these habiliments again.

The only sore spot in this film that made me cringe is Joel Fry as Jasper, whose weird, unrequited thing for Cruella turns him into a limp, dull character who pulls focus in the worst way, a sort of bedraggled wallflower with little humor and too much sentiment. Paul Walter Hauser as Horace, on the other hand, is a laugh-aloud delight, and his pairing with wicked little piratey dog Wink is nothing short of brilliant. Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Kayvan Novak pop in to the film occasionally as Anita and Roger, and are lovely even as they are underused. But the movie belongs fully to Emma Thompson and Emma Stone, who manage to work with their costumes and hair in such a way that their performances elevate to another level altogether. Much like Glenn Close did, actually, in the original.

I say "original," because it quickly became apparent that this movie is not a prequel to the 1961 animated classic so much as it is a prequel to the 1996 live-action film that started the whole trend. Its updated time period and intoxicating visual spectacle reveal its kinship, to say nothing of the costumes that are sure to win buckets of awards. And with Close as executive producer here, could we have expected anything else? I'm desperately hoping for a follow-up film, partly to answer the remaining question of how and why Cruella becomes an animal-killing psychopath. Remember, it's not just dogs; in the original, we're introduced to her by way of cat-napping a Siberian tiger from the zoo and turning it into, well, something furry to play with in her boudoir.

But mostly, I'm eager for a sequel that has already been teased. Reports indicate that both Emma Thompson (who stars here, of course, but deserves a lot more screen time) and Emma Stone have publicly expressed interest in a sequel that bridges time, providing more backstory for these new characters and crossing over into Cruella's adult life. They described it as a Godfather II-like thing, which makes magnificently twisted sense, and would surely include Close reprising the role. If that happened, I could die happy.

In the Earth (2021)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Ben Wheatley is back, baby! After his disastrous attempt at mainstream fare in Rebecca on Netflix, Wheatley returns to the form he has perfected. That's not to say it's perfect, and generally speaking his aesthetic isn't my cuppa, but its peculiarities mark it as canon among the filmmaker's signature works like Kill List and High-Rise. Wheatley movies are seemingly made for my people: artsy-farsty weirdos who, in the middle of the week, like watching challenging and often unsatisfying films in small, intimate groups while the wine is flowing; discussion may follow, but probably won't bypass the "and what the heck was that moment about?" commentary. It's the midnight arthouse kind of earned pretentiousness that I find dazzling only when it's about something horrific. Like In the Earth. 

Despite a relative lack of scares, Wheatley's latest might be one of his more accessible genre films. It's certainly his timeliest. Dr. Martin Lowery (played by an effectively miserable Joel Fry) is on a mission in a world gone awry. As a deadly pandemic rages, forcing people to learn how to live with it, he journeys to a remote government outpost in a dense forest. Meeting up with park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), the two embark on a two-day trek to find Dr. Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), who has been missing for months after turning off her radio. Wendle has been working with fungi and plants to improve crop growth, and has theorized that the natural world is sentient and communicates through a psychic network of roots and spores.

Before you start counting, I'll start. The references here abound, and it's easy to get distracted. Apocalyptic plants? The Happening. A journey into rural crazyville? Heart of Darkness. A mysterious monolith that might be sentient? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Shocking brutality and anguish in a world devoid of rationality or morality? Take your pick, but The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn't a far cry. Wheatley knows how to make an effective, low-budget movie that feels expensive, and gloomy forests that just might be the home of supernatural horrors is right up his alley. From these examples, you pretty much know what's going to happen, but that doesn't stop you from giving in to this movie's hypnotic seduction.

Apart from plenty of kaleidoscopic hallucinations -- which we are made to experience along with the characters -- there isn't too much chaos in this film. An otherwise linear story is layered thickly with references, themes, and ideas that individually would make interesting movies but altogether make a muddy sort of fever dream. Possibilities, in Wheatley flicks, tend to matter more than reality, and impressions matter more than expressions. Discussions range from the scientific use of death (fungus) to increase life (crops) to the effect of the Malleus Maleficarum on Western civilization, and if that doesn't prime your head for a wild trip, you're probably already on shrooms.

Of course the woodland trek goes badly, but then it gets worse. And worse again. And bad things keep happening. There's a hostage situation with a wackadoo hermit, there's a prolonged chase, and there's some particularly gory dismemberment. There's a hazmat suit and there's white ceremonial robes, there's a bow and arrow and an axe (and a very dangerous hook). There's pre-Christian folklore, lots of blood, and an obsession with rounded openings (eyes, wounds, holes). There's speakers and strobe lights in the middle of the woods, and there's a fog of spores that rings a clearing. What do we make of all this? I guess it doesn't much matter, because that's Wheatley's job. More than once I was reminded of the 1979 Soviet film Stalker, mostly because of the weird mixture of psychology and science fiction in the woods, but Wheatley seemed to want to do it with something like Leatherface as the titular stalker.

And when they do finally find Dr. Wendle, she's about as terrifying as anything you might expect, clearly unhinged but confined under respectable layers of purpose and education and civility. She delivers some intense exposition in terms of character -- regarding her past relationships with both Martin and the batshit crazy, violent hermit Zach (Reece Shearsmith) -- and in terms of theme and plot, as she reveals that her research has bent away from agriculture and toward an eldritch guardian of the woods. Science, after all, is just the modern verbiage for magic. And when you see the unholy but very interesting experiments Wendle is enacting, it's easy to feel, for even the briefest of moments, that she might be onto something real. After the last year of our lives, aren't we all a bit desperate to try anything if it helps us all reconnect? Remember the joy we felt last spring when we saw images and read data about nature healing itself as we all locked down? Shouldn't we still yearn for that?

There's a bit of a bloodbath climax, which is nice, but then the movie just sort of ends. Leave it to Wheatley to make us scramble for comprehension and meaning after throwing so much at us, but I confess to hoping for a bit more cohesion. If the various and varied elements of this movie fit together, it's largely without clear logic or connections; that's okay, but it does leave one feeling distinctly unsatisfied. Then again, why should we feel satisfied in a movie -- in a world -- so messed up that even looking for answers will leave you brutalized, bewildered, and ultimately lost in the woods?