You Won't Be Alone (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

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

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

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

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

Watcher (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

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

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

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

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

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Northman (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

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

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

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

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

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

The Black Phone (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

It's an odd hybrid of a film, to be sure, but that kind of fits with the whole Jurassic Park thing. They've always cleverly blended genre, and while this latest pushes its premise much farther, I'm glad the films are evolving a bit beyond the tried-and-true method they've perfected over five films already. When Fallen Kingdom ended, I was an absolute mess because the final sequence is everything I've wanted from the franchise since it was suggestively promised to us in the second half of The Lost World: dinosaurs freely roaming the earth again. While the film obviously needs a story, it does a really fabulous job of showing news reels and montages of this sci-fi nightmarish fantasy from the opening sequence to the finale. We don't need to imagine the Mosasaur gobbling surfers or Pteranodons perching above Columbus Circle because we can finally see it on the big screen!

Set four years after the previous installment, dinosaurs have now bred widely and are spread across the world. Sometimes it's like seeing a bear or moose in the wild; sometimes it results in chaos, wreckage, and death. But rather than explore this generally, the film's primary concerns seem to be with attempts to control or profit from this phenomenon. Enter Biosyn Genetics, a rival company of InGen (from the previous films) who have established a scientific sanctuary in Italy to study dino DNA and, hopefully, find medical and agricultural breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the company is headed by Lewis Dodgson (who we might remember from the first film as Dennis Nedry's accomplice in stealing from Hammond), whose criminality is put on display when a plague of prehistoric locusts is unleashed on the world, bred to devour all crops not genetically linked to Biosyn (get it? "Bio"logical "sin"s are sort of their MO). Fallout from this ecological disaster spurs the plot of Dominion, and thankfully allows for the return of some familiar faces.

Paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), in researching the suspect crops, approaches paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt), raising the cloned Maisie Lockwood in the Sierra Nevada, are brought out of relative isolation when Biosyn captures the Velociraptor Blue's asexually produced offspring and Maisie in one shocking raid. When the heroes approach Biosyn, they meet up with a friendly face in the form of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), now working as a sort of corporate ethicist for Dodgson. Weird, sure, but it's a lot of fun to see the whole gang together.

I'd have preferred a less plot-forced approach. We skip around the world so many times, from snowcapped North American mountains to rooftops in the Mediterranean, that it feels more like a Marvel movie than a Park movie; then again, there's a reason this trilogy changed its title to World, and this is exactly that reason. We aren't given ample time, yet again, to really know Maisie or understand her character. She's mostly a MacGuffin, one whose thematic implications are fascinating but never really developed or explored in this trilogy. There are also two new characters including a pilot who feels more like a mercenary (DeWanda Wise) and the disillusioned head of Biosyn communications (Mamoudou Athie) who aren't developed at all and who seem merely to set up whatever comes next from the franchise. (What's the bet it'll be a limited series exclusively for streaming?)

Thankfully, we get a bit more development of Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) here, who is arguably the real villain of the franchise, and Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is actually a pretty great villain for this episode because he links it all back to the beginning. Scott himself delivers an unnervingly effective performance to undermine what could easily have been a rote character, much like Goldblum, using odd words and phrasing, unexpected tonal shifts, and even distinctly uncomfortable body language to suggest the weirdness of his character; one imagines he studied Musk, Jobs, or Zuckerberg quite a lot for the role.

If it wasn't clear already, there is a lot going on in this film. I wish it took the careful time to explore all its ideas like the first Jurassic World did: glass spheres for prairie strolls, kayaks on a dino river, a petting zoo are all genius and well-presented. But here, we're given mere seconds to take in all the information from a dinosaur black market, dino meat street vendors, dino fighting pits. These scenes dissipate much too quickly and without -- I think this is the significant bit so I'll repeat -- without caring enough to make the scenes believable and therefore tense. All five previous films are keenly aware that every single moment has to have the dread or tension that death is actively nearby. This one ratchets up the action and spectacle, but there's never really the worry that Owen or Alan will get eaten or squashed. And that's a difficult failing to overlook. But, if the franchise continues (and I hope it does), then perhaps this film will be remembered more fondly as the launching pad for some really interesting and exciting work. As it is, it probably ties with the third film as my least favorite of the franchise, which admittedly isn't saying much because I can hardly wait to watch this one again!

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Score: 2 / 5

Here we go again. The opening title card is the same as before, and the opening sequence again plays out over the familiar song "Danger Zone." This is a legacy sequel in spades, one that feels determined to work best for nostalgia's sake. Even though the late Tony Scott isn't directing this time, new director Joseph Kosinski seems to do his best mimicking the style of the earlier film, though his tone is much more somber this time. Frankly, I don't much like the first one, and while this film feels more serious and features much better-filmed practical effects, it also is just more of the same (without any queer coding to distract from its emptiness). I'm just not a fan of the whole Top Gun thing.

We begin with Tom Cruise's character, call sign "Maverick," working as a test pilot for the US Navy, a more believable career for him after the first film ended with him preparing to teach the top-tier titular program's students to become the Navy's best fighting pilots. He is summoned on a mythic "final job" mission to return to teaching a group of recent Top Gun graduates for a crucial mission. He doesn't really want to, but it persuaded to join. Unfortunately, he quickly learns that one of his students will be "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) the son of "Goose," Maverick's former wingman who died in an accident Maverick caused. He has never forgiven himself, and is sure that Rooster hasn't either.

The actual plot is about as irrelevant and vague as it was in the original. There is an enemy, but great care is taken to never identify the enemy (in the first, we can probably assume North Korea or China; in this, it's almost certainly Russia). There is a mission to be done, though it's basically opaque. There's an impossible flight plan to destroy some target and almost certainly die in the process (is it the trench climax from Star Wars: A New Hope, or perhaps a Mission: Impossible task?). And, on the home front, Maverick needs to navigate his way around these young hotshots, harden them for the impossible, and also hopefully kindle romance with the local single-mother bartender (Jennifer Connelly). Because he's him, and this is us, and why not?

The cast is uniformly, well, uniform. Serviceable but generally unremarkable, and that's the result of writing and direction. A film so narratively castrated can scarcely harness the kind of energy wartime action dramas need to capture our attention. The lack of specifics in plot, in any capacity, makes the film feel more like a dreamy, vaguely patriotic attempt at rousing dangerous ideological pockets of our culture, much like the first film was so jingoistic and vainly pious for its own good. (Then again, the performatively macho presentation of the first has since been subjected to much critical suspicion, resulting in famed attempts to queer the material. It's funny and diverting, but ultimately a troubling exercise unless you take the whole film as camp, which is also diverting but I think fruitless.)

It's a summer blockbuster, taken for its entirety, and some people will love it. I enjoyed some of the didactic zingers and the general nostalgic sentimentality for what they were. Even though the actors are largely irrelevant, Connelly works hard to feel important and Cruise just sort of is important anymore, so they command the screen well. Teller often plays off Glen Powell, and I'd like to see them square off in a better film together, as their repartee is delightful. Val Kilmer returns for a single scene, and it's emotional enough when he reveals why he selected Maverick for this job; Jon Hamm and Ed Harris also pop in occasionally for apparent reasons. Movies like this tend to cast recognizable, grizzled older white men to bark orders and repeat lines like "But that's impossible" and "You're here to follow my lead," and that's all they do here too. There are some breathtaking sequences of airborne dogfights and low-altitude chases that are infinitely better than their counterparts in the original -- and a sexy beachside football match to rival the original's volleyball playoff -- and while it's still not movie material I love, I appreciated the authenticity and lack of VFX (and excellent editing!) in telling those parts of the story.

Gaia (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

What a delicious film. Its story may not have the heft of a confident storyteller -- despite its ambitious and timely ideas from screenwriter Tertius Kapp -- but under the direction of Jaco Bouwer it manages to perform itself visually. It doesn't take long for us to feel the film, before we really understand what is happening, and that's the mark of great collaboration. Especially with cinematography (here by Jorrie van der Walt). This is the sort of transportive filmmaking even popular and "great" directors spend entire careers trying to achieve. And here it is in an independent release from South Africa in the middle of a pandemic. The big American studios should take note.

Two forest rangers, Gabi and Winston, are patrolling a river in the protected Tsitsikamma Forest, using a drone to survey the surrounding area. We're blessed with a God's eye perspective almost immediately (actually, it's the drone, so...deus ex machina?) as the two isolated rangers paddle slowly through the jungle. When the drone crashes, Gabi is determined to retrieve it and not litter; Winston warns her of the dangers of the jungle. She forges ahead alone (bad idea) and almost instantly begins to suffer the consequences, triggering a trap and getting stabbed right through her foot before wandering into a remote cabin (bad idea) to rest and treat her wound. Meanwhile, Winston hears her scream of pain and ventures into the jungle after her (bad idea) as night falls (bad idea) and encounters terrifying humanoid creatures before becoming apparently infected by fungal spores.

When night falls, a fairly straightforward adventure/survival story shifts into full-blown horror. The forest is alive, a designation realized soon enough through the red lighting and editorial manipulations of our expectations. Stunning visuals show mushrooms and other fungi growing quickly, unfurling their tendrils and oozing forward in almost sentient ways, to say nothing of the creatures which appear not unlike the pirate crew of Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean films due to the amount of mushrooms and moss and things growing on them. Winston, experiencing it all firsthand, catches on really quickly that this is bad; Gabi is slower to understand, sheltered as she may be, but she suspects that the red light and impossible sounds in the jungle indicate the presence of a more cosmic threat. And then the owners of the cabin show up -- a father and son survivalist pair who are utterly terrifying -- and that's when the movie kicks into high gear (as if it wasn't already).

Taking its visual (and, to some extent, narrative) inspiration from the mushrooms, the film's visuals get increasingly trippy and the editing wanders and returns sometimes quickly enough that you feel you're experiencing far more than just a survival story, even as you're not quite sure what exactly is happening. Barend and Stefan, the survivalists, become less terrifying because they seem to know what the mysterious presence in the jungle is and how to navigate around it. When the crazy person becomes understandable or even smart to us, we know the designed horror of the story is settling in; it's all about displacing us from the comfort of audienceship. In many ways, it's a bit like the horrors of Apocalypse Now and Deliverance and even The Mosquito Coast in the characters' isolation and dance with madness. But it also primarily works as an ecological horror film, and would pair nicely (if a little too well) with In the Earth. I also thought a few times of Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Beach House, so if that range of films gives you any idea, this movie is pretty intense and a little bonkers.

Add in the religious and arguably pagan fervor of the survivalists (specifically the father Barend) and the increasingly unhinged dream sequences -- though it's not always clear if they are dreams or not -- and the film reaches for really profound and heady concepts. But no matter how weird the movie gets, its messages are clear (unlike, in that regard, In the Earth): the warnings that we have irreparably damaged the earth will be made manifest and the consequences returned to humankind one way or another. There's an urgency to the proceedings, no doubt fueled by our collective fear of biological annihilation since the COVD-19 pandemic, wherein even isolating oneself in nature is dangerous. People seeking solitude and safety may find something far worse than the crime or disease of urban life: an indifferent and predatory world chewing you up, spitting you out, and forgetting that you even existed.

We Need to Do Something (2021)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It's a brilliant premise. The film opens with a family entering their bathroom to take shelter. It's a large space, thankfully, for the family of four, and it's clear they're not the happiest family all together. Their phones ding repeatedly with tornado warnings, interrupting daughter Melissa (Sierra McCormick) as she worriedly tries to text her significant other. The mother Diane (Vinessa Shaw) tries to comfort the young son Bobby (John James Cronin), who seems exceptionally frightened, though we're not quite sure if he's scared of the storm or his father Robert (Pat Healy), whose aggressive and bitter jabs at the family reveal that he's not exactly a nice guy. But, within the first ten minutes of the film, the storm feels a bit more intense than it should, with a sustained white light and the sound of something like a jet crashing. Or, you know, maybe the earth opening up. We can't see anything of the outside world. Which is why it's so scary when Robert can't get the door open again.

Could a tree have fallen in front of it? Is the rest of their home still there? Who knows, because the tiled bathroom also doesn't have usable windows or an easy way to punch through the walls. It's telling that this movie was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, because its most immediate pleasure (and horror) is that of being stuck at home with your family. Especially family with whom you have some bad history. It would work well as a psychological drama in a locked space. Some of those can be really effective, such as Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Rope, or even recent films like Locke and Buried; it's a terrifying and theatrical experience of being intimately connected with trapped people while we also feel trapped. That sounds like a pretty great movie to me. But We Need to Do Something takes a sudden, drastic turn, and while I really admire its ambition and its absolutely unpredictable plot, I wish the screenplay did a little bit more to flesh everything out.

It starts when a dog -- or, at least, what we think is a dog -- starts sniffing around by the door. The family can open it enough to get an arm through, and they try to get the dog to approach. Maybe that will alert rescuers to their location! The dog approaches and makes some noise, but then it suddenly speaks in a demonic voice (voiced, oddly and effectively, by Ozzy Osbourne), and this sudden turn to supernatural horror is nothing short of breathtaking. I was so stunned I had to pause the movie and get another drink already. Is this locked-in-the-house thriller now also a Satanic panic or Lovecraftian horror film? My suspicions and terror were further roused when a venomous snake materializes in the bathroom. 

There is no relying on "the man," as Robert quickly becomes unhinged and violent. There is no relying on the outside world, as the family has absolutely no idea what's happening. This absurdist streak manifests mostly in partially effective dialogue between the family meant to create drama, but as such it becomes often unexpectedly funny. Sometimes the humor is so dark I felt shame in chuckling, and sometimes it's so wacky that I audibly guffawed, but it's never laugh-out-loud comedy. It reminded me a bit of Sam Raimi's early work, not least because Healy's bugged-out angry/scared eyes as he loses it felt so akin to Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead. The man of the house actually can't handle the things he's expected to handle (or, more accurately, the things he feels are his duty under pressure). 

There is some backstory, mostly shared in dreamy flashbacks about Melissa and her girlfriend, and that didn't quite work as well for me. There is some school bullying that spurs them on to witchcraft, and the suggestion might be that their retaliation on the bullies may have brought about their current situation. Apocalyptic as it feels, though, it could just be a sort of "sins of the father revisited" circumstance in which this family is being uniquely punished (think of a less festive and more paranoid Krampus). But there's just not enough of that story -- whatever it is -- to know for sure. Instead, we're left with the chilling feeling that this dark and insane story could just be a reflection of the way we all experienced the trauma of pandemic lockdown. That's where the ending is both satisfying and infuriating: we think it's about to be over finally, but more horror awaits us just outside the door.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Its opening sequence reads like some of the auteur's best work. A little boy in a nasty, dirty bathroom, curls up beneath the sink and begins eating. But this is not a vampire from The Brood or an offspring of The Fly; he eats a trash can. Not its contents. Literally the can itself. It's weird, certainly, but not quite horrifying. That adjective comes into play a moment later, when the boy's sad and disgusted mother enters and kills the boy. A brutal way to start a film, and all the more intriguing because there is no exposition, no rationale, no history. And, noteworthy, we never revisit the scene in the film.

Cronenberg is of course the master of body horror (or "the body beautiful" as he calls it), and Crimes of the Future is very much a return to form after two decades of drama and history and thriller films (almost all of which are also excellent). From his twisted mind, we're introduced very quickly and without any panache to a world in the vaguely distant future that feels grim, grimy, and altogether nasty. Think a less urban Blade Runner aesthetic. Humanity has apparently begun to mutate in this polluted waste of a world so that some humans continuously grow new organs, and most humans no longer experience pain. As a result, of course, new occupations have arisen. In what seems to be his fantasy of the middle of the end of humankind (it's not the beginning because of the world-weary nature of the proceedings and the characters, and it's not the end because humans are apparently generally handling the world fairly well), there has sprung up quite a market for human organs. Technicians have developed biological machines to help humans sleep and eat more organically (as if those weren't two of the most organic functions of humans anyway).

As different people have evolved differently, there seems to be an intense stigma specifically against humans who have evolved to the point of being able to eat plastics. Hence the opening scene. These considerations could make for a film with massive scope, somebody like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich might make a global disaster movie; somebody like Steven Soderbergh or Ridley Scott might make an epic that is also intimate. Cronenberg, in his signature style, makes a distinctly political premise markedly antipolitical in execution, meaning that this movie that indirectly references the plastics that have polluted our world and that already exist within human bloodstreams and takes it to a logical conclusion: if saving the earth (and humanity) that was is less and less likely, as it is, perhaps we need to look forward into adapting our world to accept and cater to this plastics behemoth we've created.

It's frighteningly accessible to our pandemic world, too; learning to live with the constant threat of annihilation and how to not only survive but use that threat to somehow better ourselves. Enter Caprice (Lea Seydoux) and Saul (Viggo Mortensen), an ex-surgeon and performance artist respectively, who kind of hate what they do but fill a particular need and niche for themselves and their audience. Saul continuously grows new organs (and yes, the idea of increased and unwieldy cancer problems as a result of pollution and plastics is present), and for a profit, they perform surgeries in front of a crowd to remove those organs. It pushes Saul's body to horrific limits, opening the body to new possibilities as the film tells us; since pain isn't really a concern anymore, the body can be molded in much more violent ways than we see today with body modifications and performance/body art.

Where the movie makes its most intriguing (and, for me, horrific) turn is that these surgeries are notably erotic. Calmly wicked, subversive and raw, the new openings in Saul's body provide ample locations for penetration; several scenes in which Caprice slides her fingers or hand inside feel uncomfortably sexual. Perhaps it's this reality -- all captured with a sensual eye by the camera -- that entices Timlin (Kristen Stewart) to fall in love with the artistic duo. She's a bureaucrat gopher in the National Organ Registry, investigating and keeping tabs on new organ growths, which naturally brings her into a potentially compromising situation with Saul. On the other hand, the plastic folk are almost anti-sensual, as plastic (and toxic) in their interactions as in their diet, led by a mysterious and inscrutable Scott Speedman (I don't recall his character's name) who is determined to prove the government's stance on human evolution is wrong.

There is a lot of heady material here, and many lenses can be applied to the film to tease out its many ideas on everything from evolution to sex, from environment to government, from social corruption to economic failure. And yet the film places equal -- if not greater -- emphasis on the subtle, mostly nonverbal, human experience of all these things, as if to say, "this is our reality now, if exaggerated, so what do we really feel about it?" Alarming, calming, horrific and beautiful, this is Cronenberg at his typical best, and while it's confusing and cerebral stuff, it's also a fascinating and fun time at the cinema.