Jurassic World (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

Okay, the first thing you need to know about Jurassic World is that it is in every way superior to its predecessor. Whereas the third installment had exactly two decent sequences, this film is one long thrill ride. In fact, it's much scarier than even the first Jurassic Park, because it doesn't need to establish the "awe" factor of dinos, or the empty hope that the proceedings will turn into anything but a living nightmare. From the very first shot (of a wickedly clawed beast hatching and glaring into our souls), we know this is a thinly-veiled horror movie. More specifically, this is a thoroughbred monster movie.

The best thing about this film, though, isn't its frightening intensity. It's that it is so smart about being scary. Besides its intelligent dialogue (which is second only to the first film's), it has a reckless pace not unlike this summer's other high-speed blockbuster, Mad Max: Fury Road. Director Colin Trevorrow fits most of his exposition into our wide cultural knowledge of the franchise, and recalls it through minute details on set. Rather than wasting time, as I said, reinforcing our wonder and awe at his monsters, he skates over a lot of the familiar shots in favor of brand new ones (much like the management staff of the new park itself). Rather than a slow pan over a hillside with long-necked dinosaurs (I'm sorry, the scientific names are escaping me), which we've seen in at least two of the previous films, we skip right into the exciting new sights, like the Mosasaur lagoon and the Triceratops petting zoo.

We also skip over the well-trod ground of Velociraptors being deadly and leap into a whole new scenario, wherein they are being trained by none other than Indiana Jones himself. Oops, I mean Chris Pratt. In yet another swashbuckling turn, he dons this muscular, gruff persona well with just enough room to slide some fitting humor into the movie. He is a nice foil to Bryce Dallas Howard's managerial role, She of the White Skirt and Sensible Heels. Sadly, we have no Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, or Julianne Moore this time, but Pratt and Howard take the reins with no apologies or reservations (I think John Hammond would say they "spared no expense"). I was more than a little worried when they set up our two leads as such obnoxiously stereotypical gender tropes, but, again, it's a filmmaker's shorthand that speeds us right along into the action. Also, those tropes (as we immediately suspect) break down very quickly, and by the time the climax comes 'round, Howard is arguably more heroic than Pratt, as she herself drives the kids to safety while under violent attack by raptors and later unleashes the T-Rex while carrying a flare. And she does everything in the movie while wearing those heels. So there's that.

I keep hinting that this film is all about the thrills. And it is. But it's pretty clear that Trevorrow loves his dinosaurs, and that love is infectious. He may not do many long, slow shots of a dino silhouetted by the morning sunlight, but he certainly inserts glorious little moments of visionary beauty into his adventure. At one point, the hybrid monster yanks up a soldier into the foliage overhead, and as the camera looks up to watch, his blood plops down on the camera like a little rain. I guess that doesn't sound all that great but in the moment, it's almost poetic in its stunning color and brevity. Or when Howard's character opens the T-Rex pen to lure it out, and the light from her flare reflects in its approaching eyes. Brilliant. I would argue too that Trevorrow finds awe in his conceptualization of the dinosaurs as autonomous beings, rather than mindless carnivores that pop out at us. Whereas, in the third film, the Spinosaurus tends to just pop up all over the place and bite at our heroes (and so do all the other dinos in that movie, unfortunately), here the Indominus Rex (?) is driven by a superior intelligence, mutated genes, and the explicit ability to communicate with several species. The velociraptors, similarly, are personalized with names and a bizarre connection with Pratt's character that hints at a form of respect.

My last thoughts on this movie have to do with its violence. The first Jurassic Park worked memorably well due to Spielberg's use of suspense and tension through editing: We know the electric fence will turn on because we see Ellie slipping the switches, we just don't know when; we see the raptors see the children in the kitchen, we just don't know if they can actually open doors yet. In this film, however, Trevorrow seems less concerned with this type of storytelling. Rather, he seems to take his hint off the Indominus itself and, where the horror comes into play, allows the violence and jump-scares to be as brutal as they are. Almost every moment of violence is more visceral than in the other films, from the monster's clawed-out tracking device dripping with blood to the claws of the raptors lunging at the back of the truck. In fact, though I almost never verbally react to movies, yelled out loud twice in this picture. Once when the Indominus was smashing the gyrosphere over the children, and once when a raptor head burst in through Howard's driver window. But these weren't just sump scares. Violence had already been happening, and violence continued to happen after. Trevorrow cleverly (and sadistically) keeps amping up the action sequences in more and more intense ways before he resolves them.

I'm sure a 5 is a bit high for a score. But I love dinosaurs, I love this franchise, and frankly this film is exactly what we needed to keep it going. It's not overscored, overacted, or overplotted. Though it relies heavily on special effects, they're really good. Its themes are familiar but not dwelt upon, and its gender stereotypes are annoying but serve as an access point before allowing themselves to be bent. The climax was rather overwrought, but in which of the three preceding films has it not been? At least it didn't use a bullshit dues ex machina like in #3. I'm still bitter about that one.

Now let's just pray the next installment comes a little sooner!

IMDb: Jurassic World

Poltergeist (2015)

Score: 3 / 5

It was only a matter of time before someone remade Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg's 1982 Poltergeist. And I was ready for it. Frankly, I never much liked the original, because the effects are weird, the editing clunky, and the dialogue poor. The only things I enjoyed were the great lighting and the feminist (or at least female-centered) angle. But I think most of my difficulty with that film is its label as a horror film; it's hardly ever frightening or even disturbing, besides the moment when one man hallucinates peeling his own face off. Much like M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water (2006), the original Poltergeist is a dark fantasy, narrated much like a straightforward fairytale and filmed accordingly. It's less a haunted house movie (compare it to The Haunting, 1963) and more an edgier NeverEnding Story. Come on, I mean, a tree tries to eat a child and "The Beast" looks like Falkor mixed with Ridley Scott's Alien.

But now we have a scary Poltergeist. Or at least one that doesn't feel laughable. The foremost reason Gil Kenan's new vision is a real horror movie is that he doesn't film it as a fairytale with bright colors, still wideshots, or predictable effects. Rather, Kenan lingers on empty frames, daring the audience to follow him into the nightmare. That's not to say it's a novel technique (indeed, we'd be hard-pressed to find a non-found-footage horror film in the last decade that doesn't do the same). But it is no less effective here.

That said, this movie has plenty of its own faults. Though it's a distinctive horror film, as opposed to its inspiration, it labors under an intrusive score and little difference from the original film. If Kenan wanted to keep us totally on the edge of our seats, he would have played a bit more with the plot; that he didn't suggests to me that he had another agenda. Perhaps the credit also goes to the writer, David Lindsay-Abaire, who shifted the focus from the female "horror" of the first film to a less thematic and more iconic sense of contemporary paranormal activity. Let me explain. Hooper's original featured two female paranormal experts who came into the haunted home in an effort to bring back the (also female) victim, a child; ultimately, the child's mother is the sole means by which the child is returned home; the portal to the other world is arguably feminine, as a hole that opens periodically and (violently) sucks in its prey, and spits them out again in a sticky red fluid; an unveiled monstrous entity at the end (perhaps another portal to the spirit dimension? Who knows?) is distinctly vaginal, as a ribbed, red circle that similarly seeks to devour the child in a cruel inversion of a birthing process.

Still with me? Unlike many horror films that thematically or artistically position the audience with a (intrusive, gazing, violent) male horror-entity, Hooper's film was especially concerned with a female horror-entity (and hero). To hell with all that for this new film. For better or worse, Lindsay-Abaire and Kenan decided to have one female and one male paranormal expert, to have that male expert be a bizarre sacrificial lamb, to have the (still female) victim's brother (not mother) be the means of her salvation, and to do away with most of the feminine-horror imagery (no gaping vagina to devour the children here, and no Falkor either for that matter). In fact, we are actually allowed to see inside the portal this time, and the other dimension looks more like a scene from Dante's Inferno or "The Further" from Insidious (2010) than anything else: a murky, dark tunnel crowded with green-gray corpses that grab at the children like Harry Potter's Inferi.

So I don't know. Is it less likely to spark intelligent discussion of the gendered dynamics of horror films? Yes. Is it less likely to make you roll your eyes, chuckle, and then yawn? Yes. I fancied it because it was actually kind of creepy, unlike the original, and because Sam Rockwell is a sort of guilty pleasure of mine. I thought the dialogue was more engaging, the effects familiar but more grounded than in 1982, and the pacing a bit easier to manage than before. It's also just as overscored and just as melodramatic as before, and the lighting isn't nearly as inventive. Does it make me more anxious for Insidious: Chapter Three? You bet your ghost.

IMDb: Poltergeist

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

All hail George Miller. Brilliantly reimagining his iconic earlier films, our director has also sharply proven that summer blockbusters can be high art and chillingly prophetic. (All the more important now, seeing as the blockbuster count this summer is unusually high.) What we have here is the most dynamic, fast-paced, gritty, intelligent action film I've ever seen, and one that almost never lets up for its full two-hour span. Sure, there are brief moments of connection, despair, and planning, but they are sharply underscored by the knowledge that danger is literally closing in behind us.

And perhaps the best hint to that fact lies in Tom Hardy's eyes. For a film with such little dialogue, we desperately needed actors who could give us a full view into their characters, even when their faces are covered by metal masks or a ton of facepaint. And Hardy delivers as our Max with little more than his frantic eyes, which command the screen with every flicker; one wonders if he studied animals in captivity to achieve his fierce paranoia and desperate cunning. His grunts also reveal a lot, and the two in tandem are enough to make us laugh -- even while sitting on the edge of our seats -- in his first encounter with Charlize Theron's character.

The simple story is thus: Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, the villain from the first Mad Max in 1979) has established himself in a post-apocalyptic desert as a warlord/cult leader of a crude civilization that prizes vehicle fuel and water above all else. Imperator Furiosa, some kind of female (or maybe sexless) official in Joe's kingdom, helps his five wives (chosen for their fertility) escape Joe's harem/prison. When Joe learns of this betrayal, he immediately gives chase, alerting his berserker War Boys and nearby highway gangsters to help him. One of his War Boys (Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult) requires blood due to some illness, and so the recently captured Max (a universal donor, apparently) is bound to the front of his car to be his intravenous supplier. Chaos ensues, Max and Furiosa develop a working camaraderie, and more chaos ensues. It's a vision of hell, and yet it's, as Nux says, "a lovely day!"

Although the title suggests that Max is, as in the previous films, the protagonist/hero/antihero, I am not so sure that is the case here. While the film opens with Max and arguably ends with a focus on him, his role through much of the plot is largely inconsequential, or at the very most supporting. Rather, Furiosa performs the inciting incident, singly carries the weight of her journey, and decisively controls her own fate. In fact, more than once she reminded me of Ripley (Alien, 1979), but maybe that's mostly because of all the sweat. And the large mechanical arm/gun she swings around like a pro.

Perhaps the best element of this film, though, is its color palette. Leave it to George Miller to make a desert wasteland look like it belongs in James Cameron's Avatar (2009). The blinding whites and yellows turn into striking blues and blacks by night, the War Boys' black and white body paint stand out dramatically from the sandy landscape, and of course the many explosions -- notably in the sandstorm sequence -- look rather like surrealist paintings. Miller heightens the frenzy with his fast-paced editing and manipulated frame rate, which has a bizarre effect; usually the action sequences (which comprise most of the movie) have the funky frame rate (sometimes faster, sometimes slower). This both distanced me from the action and made me feel like I was there watching it really happen, because I imagine myself seeing in shaky, jittery visuals while having sunstroke and fighting. Does that make sense?

If not, we can always consider the other main reason for this crazy aesthetic. It's called "Mad" Max for a reason. Even many of the filmmakers are bonkers. Theron has said that she thought she might die during some of the stunts, which Miller says were almost entirely practical. I guess their crazy infects us though, and it is a great thing. So go on and give this one a watch. You won't regret it.

IMDb: Mad Max: Fury Road

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Score: 3.5 / 5

You could hardly ask for a more explosive start to a summer blockbuster season, especially one with the lineup we have this year. But Avengers: Age of Ultron does something a bit surprising, and it's something I'm not sure paid off. Only time will tell, but it seemed that Marvel Studios might have dictated the film's central theme in order to make a statement about its future productions. That is, the characters' oft-repeated sentiments that change is inevitable, change is necessary, and evolution is coming -- coupled with the film's ending -- certainly seem to be preparing the vast fanbase for drastic changes as our stars move on with their lives and new stars jump on board the superhero express.

I suppose this theme of evolution implies both hope and tragedy, which might be why this film is far more melancholy than most of the films in its universe. Make no mistake, you parents who take young children to these movies: This picture is violent, it is heavy (though not as dark as, say, The Winter Soldier), and it is wildly complex. Its ending has no shawarma, no festivities, and not even much closure. In fact, it's about as tonally opposite to Guardians of the Galaxy as Marvel could have made it. If you know me, you know I prefer darker flicks to lighter pics, so why didn't I rate Ultron higher? Because it's a bit of a mess.

If we want to dig into it and read that the tonal instability of the film results from its central bittersweet heart, I can appreciate the otherwise messy script. The sheer number of characters is considerably harder to swallow, though. We have our core team of six (-ish?), but then we see a constant flow of secondary characters from the other films that pop in for a few hot seconds (Nick Fury's presence did nothing for me this time around, guys, though Agent Carter can come back any damn time!), and then Whedon has the nerve to throw in new characters who deserve more screen time and script treatment than they are given. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are pretty fabulous, though neither gets much chance to shine until the last half-hour or so of movie time. On the other hand, though, one of this film's greatest successes lies in its greater appreciation for Black Widow and Hawkeye, though Ultron is probably the closest we'll get to a standalone film for either of them. Specifically, the tender moments between Black Widow and Hulk are charming, if a little forced.

Who else is new? Oh yes, Ultron, the weirdly sassy megalomaniac spawn of Tony Stark's hubris. James Spader's voice is nice and all, but come on. A supervillain? Hardly. This hunk of computer-generated junk is only dangerous because Joss Whedon's team made him look sleek and a little vampiric. Oh, and the character's consciousness can be omnipresent, which is pretty awesome. But for someone (something?) who has literally all the world's information inside his head, he has pretty basic plans for global destruction. Turn a city into a meteor, and annihilate humans with it. But does he use his supercomputer skills to try and cause chaos around the world, maybe even as a distraction for his foes? Nope. Except in his attempted creation of Vision, which is actually rather wonderful until the Avengers hijack him, essentially hobbling Ultron's master plan before the climactic battle has even started (what kind of plot device is that??).

The worst, though: Ultron isn't even interesting. I mean, we never ever think that he might be good (Stark, baby, you named your own computer Jarvis...does "Ultron" have any kind of sweet, familiar ring to it at all?). From the first moment we hear his voice, we know he's evil, even though that particular characteristic is never explained or qualified. As a full-fledged creation, he's strangely neurotic, so he often feels like a man in a suit. Which is just weird. Okay, I might be a little biased because I just saw Ex Machina and its AI character Ava is sympathetic, sweet, and totally ominous. Hell, even the Winter Soldier was a scarier villain than Ultron, if we're going for sheer screen presence. The Pinocchio song Ultron sings is a little unnerving, but it doesn't quite fit with the character (though it might have, had the filmmakers made him into some kind of Frankenstein's monster who became disillusioned with Stark).

Instead of interesting, our villain is a product of rotten computer programs, and he unleashes a legion of uniform robots that serve much like the Chitauri in the first Avengers. That is, bodies to be destroyed by the droves. This brings me to my main problem with the film: the action scenes. They're fast, they're furious, they're even pretty darn cool. But the camera is so shaky, the editing so sharp, and the attention to all the characters so uneven that I can scarcely keep track of which hero is doing what and where and why before another set piece explodes. Add to that the downright insane levels of complicated scenarios our heroes need to fix (much like the dwarves' inane plan at the end of the second Hobbit), and the plot becomes a nightmare that feels much to large for Whedon's hands. That's not to say there aren't a few nice moments, notably the opening sequence, and near the end when all the heroes gather in a crumbling church to fight off the horde in slow-motion. And for all the filmmakers' cleverness in making the team actually work together as a team, the camera and editing don't do much to help our awareness of it. Rather, we are bombarded with things smashing and sparking and breaking and the drama is just absent.

Maybe I'm just bitter because it felt more like a video game than a movie. Special effects are great, but when you sacrifice decent character development and plot points in order to show off a huge climax scene or some cool fight moves, I'm going to roll my eyes until a hero shows off his muscles.

That said, I loved the stupid thing. It's noisy, it's silly, it's messy, it's downright fun. Is it epic? Hell no. But (despite obnoxious popular claims of everything being "epic") how many movies these days actually are, even in the superhero tradition? What it is is a rollicking (if not quite swashbuckling) action picture with some of our favorite characters doing ridiculous things and looking great in the meantime. Parts are heavier than its predecessor, and yet the whole thing feels less consequential (as a direct result of the overblown fight sequences), and so it's a pretty spot-on sequel, as far as that goes. And its last gambit is one that deserves a little nervous consideration: Do the last few scenes mean that we might not be seeing much more of Hulk, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or Thor? Don't get me wrong: Disney is not going to let these bankables slip away. And I haven't been keeping track of the stars' contracts. But Hulk running away, Iron Man's odd send-off, Hawkeye's tender homecoming, and Thor's adventurous exit all smacked of finality in a way we have not yet seen. Our last moments were instead focused on the new Avengers: War Machine, Falcon, Vision, and Scarlet Witch, led by Captain America and Black Widow. It does make one wonder what will happen in Civil War and Ragnarok, if Hulk will get a standalone picture (unlikely), and if our current heroes will be reduced to supporting roles or even cameos in Infinity War.

But we still have a long damn time before all that.

P.S. There's an awkward little mid-credits scene that reminds us that Thanos is still a thing, and that he's pissed off about these Infinity Stones getting scattered all over. Does anyone else get the feeling that Marvel Studios is going for a Harry Potter thing where it's not until the last movie that the villains and heroes fight over control of a set of holy objects? Maybe if they spread the big plot points out a wee bit we wouldn't need two parts to the climax. Just a thought.

P.P.S. I think the film might have been stronger without Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, simply because they distracted us from the dynamics of our core heroes. And because I think they fit in better with the X-Men than the Avengers. But both actors were great, and Witchy rocked in the climax. I guess if someone needed to die, I'm sort of glad it was a new person rather than one of our favorites. But is Quicky dead? That last shot of him next to Hawkeye was kind of bizarre, and in a movie where the villain can transfer his consciousness at will, I'm not counting anybody out.

IMDb: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ex Machina (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

Easily the most surprising thriller in recent memory, Ex Machina stylishly welcomes us into what is sure to be a summer movie season for the record books. Though its cool facade never seeks to approach blockbuster status, its pristine gloss and wildly intelligent craft far surpass most of the crap going through our cinemas in the last two months. What we have here is a concept-driven meditation on humanity, technology, and their increasingly ambiguous relationship. In fact, I would consider this picture to be the dark sister of Spike Jonze's 2013 Her; in each, we see a human man develop his understanding of an artificial intelligence (not insignificantly coded as female) before his attachment becomes romantic.

But it is, to be sure, the Gothic version of that tale. We have a futuristic haunted house, an ambiguous host with bizarre idiosyncrasies, bodies stuffed in closets, guests-turned-prisoners under observation and study, and even a particularly disturbing murder. So who's who? Okay, the lonelyheart oddball is played with striking vulnerability by Domhnall Gleeson, who is certainly one to keep on your radar (he is a busy rising star, with roles in Calvary, Anna Karenina, and the upcoming The Revenant and Star Wars: Episode VII). He is matched by the pitch-perfect Oscar Isaac (a personal favorite, bringing to mind his other recent triumph in A Most Violent Year) whose buff machismo is almost as subversive as his character's plans. And Alicia Vikander steals the show with her incredible movement work as the Artificial Intelligence robot called Ava. Most importantly, first-time director Alex Garland controls his film with a measured, contemplative eye and a calculated grasp on a lot of abstractions. Here he presents a gripping thriller made all the more important with its theological underpinnings, to say nothing of its technological, sociological, or even sexual dimensions (the romantic/erotic drive of this film lies most potently in what we don't clearly see: Ava "undressing" her previous incarnations, Caleb's voyeurism, Nathan's sadistic control over his servant and even Caleb (thinly disguised as flirtation)).

Ex Machina is slow but never ponderous, and its examination of human existence is almost unbearably precise, if suspiciously broad. Garland's camera (rather, cinematographer Rob Hardy's camera) lingers over exquisite but sparse sets, forcing us to consider factors of wealth and materialism in Nathan's world. Gorgeous shots of clouds passing over mountains are juxtaposed with sessions between Caleb and Ava, serving as a breath of fresh air out of the confining artificial light of Nathan's underground lair and reinforcing an unspoken conflict of interests between nature and artifice, God and man. It is not by mistake that it is outside that Caleb receives almost divine inspiration to question Nathan's motivations and behaviors, and where he ultimately decides to betray Nathan. In one outdoor instance, Caleb asks if Nathan ever feels like God, and in an indoor scene not long after, Nathan declares himself to be like God.

If you're thinking that this movie sounds all over the place, I promise it's not. But it does suggest a wide range of hot discussion points for you to immediately hop on as you're walking out of the auditorium. It's intimate but abstract, and its power lies in its almost fantastic quality: Like a parable, it presents us with archetypes and Big Picture themes, lets them do damage to each other, and forces us to make our own interpretive conclusions about what happens. All while we sit on the edge of our seats.

And you thought you were just going to relax at the movies this summer.

P.S. - If you were wondering, I think this film brings a harsh focus on the more common concept of deus ex machina ("god from the machine") specifically in the absence of deus in the title. I found the film's theological themes particularly stimulating as a result of the conspicuous lack of a "god-force" in the film. But that might be a discussion for another time.

IMDb: Ex Machina

It Follows (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

I don't think I can provide accurate words to describe my love of It Follows. Easily the most cerebral horror film since Insidious (2010), and rather similar in terms of conceptual structure, It Follows takes old genre tropes and turns them on their heads. Without even a single wink to the audience (which we've come to expect from horror in the post-Scream years), this film re-works John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) into a supernatural suburban thriller that delivers with every shot. And director David Robert Mitchell frames each shot with such edgy immediacy that the whole thing quickly becomes a meditation on dread and anticipation.

Okay, I'm making a lot of claims and references here, so let's break things down a bit. It Follows uses a basic horror narrative in which our female protagonist is, well, followed by a supernatural being after having a sexual encounter. This being -- the titular "It" -- pursues its victim without speaking or changing pace, just infinitely walking in whatever direction it must. To complicate matters, it does not rest, and only its victim can ever see it approaching, though it can change its appearance and so look wildly different at a given time. There is apparently no killing this monster, though a target may transfer its attentions by having sex; immediately after doing so, this new person becomes the monster's new target. But the danger never passes, for if the monster kills its current victim, it will turn its violent attentions to its previous target, and so forth.

Are you following me? (Sorry, it's so hard to avoid these things.) So, besides this rather fresh and intriguing concept for our antagonist (that might be a little gimmicky, but, hey, it is a horror movie), as well as a plot that seems crafted to extend into a franchise, why is this film so important? Well, let's consider the sexual ethics of horror films in the last half-century. The sexual nature of villains and violence during the Hays Code was kept to a minimum (arguably pushed most by the 1960 genre-changers Psycho and Peeping Tom) until the Code's death in 1968. Horror filmmakers were finally able to give graphic images to their biting portrayals of culture, reaching an early peak with the still-controversial The Last House on the Left (1972). In most of the slasher films of the '70s, audiences saw young people choosing sex and drugs before being punished for these sins by unspeakable monsters.

Having seen this new, "millennial" meditation on these things, it only makes sense that it takes the next logical step in modern sexual ethics. We're not watching the wrath of God (or conservative parents) being enacted upon sinful teenagers; we're watching the horrific potentialities brought to a metaphoric reality. You can have sex with someone, but do you really know their reasons for having sex with you? Do you know what they might really give you in that intimate encounter? Will you choose to continue to spread the thing you contracted? And what if that thing returns in a week, a year, ten years in the future? Now I don't know about you, but it makes perfect sense to me to have a horror film about the sexual ethics of STDs. What is "It"? I don't know, but it's kind of hard to watch the movie and not think about a literal embodiment of an STD.

Why do I say it's a modern update of Halloween? Because Mike Myers and our "It" are silent stalkers who butcher their victims and apparently can't be killed. Because you might delay or hinder their progress but there's no guarantee they won't return. Because both take place in lovely suburban areas (one in Haddonfield, Illinois, and the other filmed near Detroit, Michigan) that strike at the hearts of most middle-class Americans. Just look at all the lovely sunlit sidewalks Jamie Lee Curtis strolls down, much like what we see repeatedly in It Follows, though here they are mostly shrouded by twilight. Oh, and if we're comparing films, I really think the score of this is damn good, and it seems to be a close translation of Carpenter's Halloween score in its own right. Of course, I say this is a "modern update", but It Follows is also strangely timeless. The characters use landlines to call each other, not cell phones. The climax takes place in an indoor pool, and we see generic (but older) televisions and lamps around it. The cars are nondescript, the houses aren't striking; point being: this isn't Gothic, it isn't 70s, it isn't really 2015, so what/where/when is it? My answer (and, I suspect, David Robert Mitchell's answer): Does it matter?

And all this is to say nothing of the film's technical excellence. Mitchell intelligently avoids gimmicks and grandeur with this low-budget thriller. He keeps the action as intimate and minimalist as the story and its villain, creeping along with steady pace that never reaches frenzy but never relents in its terror for even a moment. Longshots force the actors to face their own demons, and force us to share in the immediate sensations of fear and limited awareness. Case in point: Our protagonist wakes up from her Sex of Doom (can that be a thing?) tied to a chair, told that she has to witness what follows...literally. But the camera stays trained on her face as she is wheeled around, shown the monster, and frantically pushed away to safety. Another moment: Our protagonist escapes the monster in her house and flees to a wooded part at night. Her friends follow her there, but all we see (from her point of view) is their silhouettes walking toward her. In moments like these, we are never really sure if one of the people in the background is the monster. It's a simple solution that adds more atmospheric elegance to this film than all the computer-generated fog or shadows in any horror film of the last decade.

IMDb: It Follows

Cinderella (2015)

Score: 1.5 / 5

It's hard to walk out of this movie without feeling "good" about yourself, but it's also just as hard to pinpoint anything that makes the damn thing worthwhile. Sure, it's entertaining. Sure, it's pretty and cute and funny and sweet. Sure, we all wish we had a guardian fairy to dress us up in beautiful clothes so we can escape our miserable lives and have an impossible romance come true. But we've had this narrative for centuries, and frankly I don't understand why any self-aggrandizing artist (Kenneth Branagh, I'm looking at you) would want to touch this moldy material without putting some kind of new twist or flair on it.

The Cinderella story has been adapted into countless media, with different audiences in mind, and with many different contexts. Context is crucial to any successful iteration of the tale, because as most of us know, the story has some serious problems. I'm not saying it's not an effective fantasy, but too often the story caters to a very mainstream, hegemonic culture, which is probably why it remains one of the staples of our culture now. We can probably count on one hand the number of direct Cinderella adaptations that feature people of color. We haven't seen one yet in the mainstream that features anything but a cis, hetero romance. And I've maybe only seen one production that doesn't glorify materialism and the absurdly wealthy.

So I don't think it's too much to ask that this adaptation might have had some kind of useful spin on feminist rhetoric (Ever After), the politics of monarchy (Ella Enchanted), or varied ethnicities (Disney's 1997 television film of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella). Even last season's Into the Woods featured a Cinderella who actively chooses to escape her surroundings and venture into the woods, uses her kindness and resourcefulness to better herself and those around her, and to make a conscious decision to reject her womanizing husband and thereby forsake a life of wealth and comfort. With these in mind, it's really hard to like much of anything about Branagh's new picture, which is simply a lavish-but-empty direct translation of Disney's 1950 animated film.

There are exactly two and a half valuable things about this film. First, the costumes are killer. Second, what's not to like about such a fabulous cast flouncing around like a dream? And third(ish), some of the music is rather lovely. That's it. The special effects are beyond overblown (remember Maleficent, anybody?) and take away even the slightest traces of real drama. The sets are lovely, but don't make much sense; Ella's family lives in a veritable castle in its own right, so it's hard to believe their cries of destitution and ruin when every scene shows them in a house many real people would kill to spend even a night in, all while wearing obviously expensive, gaudy clothes. Worst, though, is the script: I have not heard such vague, uninspired blather since I was riding mass transit in Chicago.

Don't believe me? Take the climax for example. Ella climbs to her attic-bedroom and opens the door. Dappled sunlight sparkles on the contours of her glass shoe, as her malevolent stepmother leers out of the shadows beyond. It's a beautiful image, and one in which the drama of the film seems finally to shine. Ella asks her stepmother, point blank, why she hates Ella so much, and my throat tightened in anticipation of a profound revelation or shocking delivery from Cate Blanchett. And all we get is a clenched cliché about Ella being too good, too pure, too innocent (the exact line escapes me because I was grinding my teeth in frustration) before she breaks off in mid-sentence and stalks away. What an absolute waste of talented actors and a beautiful scene.

I'm not going to pretend I don't find parts funny, sweet, or sentimental. In fact, one of the best scenes involves Ella's dying mother (played by our beloved Agent Carter, Hayley Atwell) giving some of the world's best advice to her young daughter. Another involves our Prince (handsome and talented Richard Madden) making his peace with his father (handsome and talented Derek Jacobi) on the latter's deathbed, before curling up next to him. And yes, okay, I fell victim to the rush of happiness when the damn shoe fits and everyone claps and smiles and kisses and sings and does whatever people do when their monarch falls in love with the little blonde help. But besides those few moments, and of course watching my goddess Cate swishing around in elegant (if bizarre) getup, most of this dull retelling have already passed effortlessly out of my head. And for that I can be truly thankful.

IMDb: Cinderella

P.S. Just a few parting thoughts. Courtesy Google Images, under "Feminist Cinderella".

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

Score: 4.5 / 5

John Madden has done it again, following up his fabulous The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) with a sequel that's slightly more kinetic and spectacular but which has lost none of its pure heart and spirit of joy. Where the first was a fantastic foray into the unknown, this second concerns the aftermath of that: getting comfortable with a new and exciting world, and reconciling a personal victory with interpersonal affection.

I think it would be fair to say the first film focused more on Tom Wilkinson (who is obviously not in the sequel) and Judi Dench, each trying to declare something about themselves in the midst of cultural changes. This film, on the other hand, seems to focus more on Maggie Smith and Dev Patel, attempting to make the best possible choices for themselves and the ones they love. In this way, the film straddles the vastly different problems facing two generations. In the first, Patel's character was primarily comedic and an aggressive plot device; in this, he takes center stage as a troubled fiancée seeking to win back his love from a perceived threat to his financial success and social status. Amidst the celebrations of youth and love, we follow Maggie Smith in her efforts to help the young man save his business and his romance. Having grown very fond of her young friend, she also keeps hidden some potentially devastating medical news from everyone at the hotel.

Much like the first film, this picture has raucous comedy, including farcical car chases and pitch-perfect one-liners popping off every few minutes. In sharp contrast, it also has striking moments of somber reflection and introspection, mostly delivered by Maggie Smith. Lillete Dubey, playing Dev Patel's character's mother, has some really nice dramatic scenes with Richard Gere, too, which I was ready for back in 2011. Beautiful costumes, fabulous lighting, and breathtaking sets decorate this picture in ways that might even surpass the first installment. The engagement parties are notably spectacular, especially the one which culminates in a rousing mass dance. Dev Patel might have won my heart up on that stage.

I could keep going, but you get the idea. I loved it, I hope there's another, I cried a lot, I laughed a lot, and I left feeling lively and affirmed. I should say, though, those last few minutes are brutal. Maggie Smith's voice-over about death and love and life is timeless and poignant and devastating and everything cliché I could possibly say. And yet it is perfect. Okay, I'll stop before I cry again.

IMDb: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Still Alice (2014)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Julianne Moore deserves all the praise she got for this movie, but the film itself wasn't nearly as well-received. And I don't know why. Timely, tragic, poignant, and beautiful, Still Alice was perhaps the most emotionally brutal film of last season's Oscar race. Not unlike 2013's similarly underpraised August: Osage County, this film depicts a horror that plagues us all in a manner both iconic and empowering. In our Age of Information, what could be more devastating than a disease that infects our brain and makes us lose sight of our knowledge, experiences, and memories? That is the phenomenon Still Alice seeks to explore.

Moore infuses great charisma and even greater compassion into her character -- who we know from the first scene to be doomed -- and allows us to understand every single step on her complex emotional journey. Her family, including Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart, and Hunter Parrish, are no less praiseworthy for their raw reactions and vulnerable sympathies. Writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland wrote an uncommonly intelligent screenplay and directed the film with such an objective approach that the film avoids needless sentimentality.

Perhaps our directors' greatest triumph is in their empathetic approach to such a devastating, terminal disease. They effectively put us inside the protagonist's world, withholding some contextual information from us so that we feel as bewildered as the woman with Alzheimer's. She goes running around her campus (Columbia), and halfway through the background blurs while we zoom in on her face, registering her pain and confusion while being completely unable to help her find her way. Later, she gets lost in her own home when she tries to find the bathroom, in a scene strikingly reminiscent of one in The Judge, and her embarrassment is almost too much to watch.

The climax of the film comes when our hero makes a seemingly foolproof plan to end her own suffering via an overdose of sleeping pills. The directors make a dangerous gamble -- but one that pays off brilliantly -- by infusing the scene with more comedy than in the rest of the film. Poor Moore views the video message (given by herself) but forgets the suicide instructions before she can carry them out. Time and again she tries, until finally she is interrupted by her nurse and spills them. Finally, when the disease has progressed so much as to destroy her ability to speak (did I mention? She's a linguistics professor. Sound like Wit (2001) much?), her aspiring actor daughter (played effectively by Kristen Stewart) reads Angels in America to her. After reading a section, she asks her mother what the monologue was about. "Love" is her response. And as the lights come up in the house, everybody was sobbing.

IMDb: Still Alice

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

Score: 3.5 / 5

After a heavy Oscar season (as usual), it's nice to have some "fun" movies to go see. Of course, that usually means they're pretty bad, too. January and February notoriously have little to offer -- besides post-awards-season screenings and re-shows of the winners -- but every once in a while we get a real treat.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is just about everything it claimed to be: a spy/action/comedy film that thoroughly owns its pulpy, meta material. Not unlike the first Die Hard in that respect, this film rather concerns the coming of age of a young British man into a secret society of do-gooders. But it's not this basic, familiar plot that makes the film so enjoyable.

Stylish and subversive, the film follows director Matthew Vaughn's kinetic energy much like we might see in a graphic novel. Sharp color contrast and crystal clear images shine through both sped-up and slowed-down action sequences, which are used alternately by Vaughn to establish an atmosphere of simple Fun. The actors are dressed in gorgeous outfits that play to their idiosyncracies (Jackson's fifty shades of the same color are hilarious) while highlighting the ironic and classy disconnect between their posh appearance and violent behavior. Vaughn's screenplay, co-written with Jane Goldman, ties these elements together with lots of self-aware dialogue, ironic twists, disturbing implications, and surprisingly intelligent self-revelations. And, frankly, the main Sinister Plot is smarter and more engaging than many self-involved spy thrillers, probably because it doesn't take itself too seriously.

I have little else to say about this movie. It's fun, and it's actually quite good at being fun. In that way, I would almost compare it to Scream, in that it takes spy movie tropes (in a fairly tired genre) and puts a new spin on them: young people become plausible protagonists, comedy perfectly counters the more weighty plot devices, and a cast of familiar actors dive together into an adrenaline-rush of action. Why wouldn't you want to see gentleman Colin Firth whooping ass in a hate-mongering church? Why wouldn't you want to see Samuel L. Jackson as a foul-mouthed megalomaniac with a lisp? Why wouldn't you want to see ridiculously attractive British spies in fabulous costumes fighting, swearing, and learning proper manners?

For a late-winter action movie, you could do a hell of a lot worse.

IMDb: Kingsman