A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

If you had told me I'd ever be grateful for Kenneth Branagh's Poirot series, I'd have called you unkind names. His characterization of the iconic detective is, to say the least, not my favorite version -- nor is it my favorite of his performances in general -- and it leaves a lot to be desired for longtime fans. His directorial efforts, too, tend toward the superficially spectacular, imbuing what should be "locked room" whodunnits with endless CGI effects, dizzying camerawork, thin dialogue, tepid attempts at social commentary, and inane action sequences. While these observations are all, in my opinion, manifest evidence in his (so far) three titles -- Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile being the first two, the former I cringe to recall but the latter I thoroughly praise -- they also do not account for the sense of escapism, exotic splendor, and raw beauty he brings to the table while hopefully introducing new generations to Agatha Christie's important and significant body of work.

Now comes A Haunting in Venice -- familiar to fans as Hallowe'en Party -- a title (and setting) change from the source material I fully support, if only for aesthetic reasons. The original, published in 1969 and set in England, is not one I've read before, but I'm aware that this film adaptation -- the only one I know of, apart from the BBC Poirot series starring David Suchet -- takes place over twenty years prior to that, in a postwar Venice with a bunch of British expats making up its cast of characters. It's set, fittingly, in a crumbling palazzo, far too large for its inhabitants but suitably spooky for their Halloween party, filled with orphaned children celebrating (wartime orphans, both from the violence and the occupation). Once the children leave, though (at least, the living ones), the adults remain for a séance requested by the palazzo owner, former opera star Rowena Drake (a magnificent Kelly Reilly). Drake is in mourning over the apparent suicide of her daughter Alicia -- it's suggested she threw herself into the canal after her fiancé chef Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen) ended their engagement -- who has seemingly been haunting the palazzo since.

The suitably Gothic setting, complete with spectacular thunderstorm and ghostly children running about, perfectly frames a truly scary story. Perhaps it's so chilling because it's one of Christie's less-familiar ones, so the element of unfamiliarity pervades each scene. But there's even some surprising violence (thankfully less "action," as Poirot would never!) that makes its PG-13 rating a bit hairy. The story isn't really anything new, just a reliable whodunnit murder mystery that ramps up as more bodies fall. Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green still work very well to modernize and pare down Christie's detailed and sometimes sprawling cases into more concise, direct, and thrilling escapades on screen, and I admire that they're bringing big budgets and A-list casts into a type of classic old film we just don't see anymore. Moreover, they yet again elicit a surprising theme from one of Christie's mysteries, this time about the futility of the violence of war: Branagh starts this story in early retirement, tired of death both personally and in terms of the second world war, dealing with broken psyches and weighing what had been won with its cost. The sinking city on the brink of rot is a perfect setting for this thematic conceit.

Enter celebrity medium Joyce Reynolds (a brilliant and chilling Michelle Yeoh), who plans to communicate with Alicia and maybe help her spirit rest. Poirot has been invited by Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey as an Agatha Christie stand-in crime novelist) whose sales aren't great and who desperately needs a big hit. Oliver is hoping to either discredit Reynolds or otherwise learn some secrets that will make for a profitable story. It helps that the assembled guests make for suspicious and eccentric characters: the Drake family's housekeeper Olga (Camille Cottin) who sees everything; PTSD-riddled war surgeon Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his charmingly precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill, Belfast) who seems able to see ghosts while caring for his father; the medium's assistants Desdemona and Nicholas Holland (Emma Laird and Ali Khan), war refugees and half-siblings; and of course and angry and mourning Maxime, just to make things spicy.

I'm curious now to read the book, because, much like Branagh's previous two films, I suspect much has been invented for this one, beyond the setting. Green, after all, is very good at writing inventive new stories based on beloved material to popular success (he wrote the previous two Branagh Poirot films, of course, but also Blade Runner 2049, Logan, Alien: Covenant, Jungle Cruise, and the series American Gods). Green imbues Poirot with a nihilistic sensibility I found perfectly suited to Branagh's interpretation and presentation of the character as he atheistically mocks the idea of consulting the dead while musing on the increasing cruelty and violence in humankind, perspectives not dissimilar from Christie's own near the end of her life. He's surrounded here by characters desperate for money and purpose, shell shocked from war and away from their homes without the means to either stake a new claim or return to the life they once had.

A final note, and one I'm admittedly unprepared to fully explore: Branagh's grandiose style has always been a bit "too much," and not just in this franchise. But this is one of the first times I really understand why he's been compared so often to Orson Welles -- apart from his Shakespeare adaptations -- and the influence here is palpable. His attitude toward Venice mirrors Welles's Othello, and he works with master cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos again to create a sumptuous world nevertheless in the expressionistic visual style of everything from Citizen Kane to The Third Man, including lots of Dutch angles, fisheye lenses, extreme high and low angles, extreme closeups, and excessive use of framing to isolate and block the frame. These shots are often edited to shocking and even humorous effect, making the whole experience a bit of a trippy "should I laugh or shudder" haunted house experience. Which, given the reworking of the source material, is exactly what we all hoped for and wanted. Bravo!

The Nun II (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

The Conjuring and its subsequent franchise are important, there's no doubt about that. But why the brilliant likes of James Wan & Co. would entrust their series to an incompetent artist like Michael Chaves is beyond me. Unlike the Saw franchise, which Wan and Whannell long since wrote off and disowned after their iconic first installment, they keep actively producing entries in this haunted-house-meets-possession series (along with Insidious), and I for one enjoy all of them so far. But Chaves's films -- starting with The Curse of La Llorona, then The Devil Made Me Do It, and now this -- are easily my least favorite of the bunch. His aesthetic style is almost nonexistent, his storytelling ability negligible, and his films dull between only occasionally effective jump scares.

And this from someone who really enjoys Valak, the "demon nun," who has become the primary antagonist of this franchise. She first appeared in The Conjuring 2, in some of its most terrifying moments, as a vengeful force determined to haunt Lorraine Warren. Valak has since made appearances in Annabelle: Creation -- which implies her involvement with the Annabelle demon Malthus -- and in her own spin-off The Nun. That film, a magnificent exercise in excess, notably attempted a new flavor of Grand Guignol camp in the genre that is rare (one that surely informed the aesthetic of this year's The Pope's Exorcist). And with something like a toothy, yellow-faced nun haunting cloistered abbeys, that approach was brilliant.

I had hoped that a sequel to that film would double down on this aesthetic, legitimizing it and continuing the titular nun's legacy as a spooky Halloween staple. But Chaves and his team, in slowing the pace, trivializing the story, and sapping the film of excitement and ingenuity, makes the film a miserable low point in the franchise while ensuring another film must be made. Granted, it's possible that the greenlit The Conjuring: Last Rites will wrap everything up, but either way, The Nun II proves itself a redundant and superfluous entry that adds fluff where it is neither needed nor wanted.

It begins five years after the first film, with Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) befriending novitiate Debra at a convent in Italy (Storm Reid) as they are tasked to investigate a string of deaths across Europe. Each murder, gruesome and violent like the immolation that opens this film, is enacted on religious leaders such as priests and are being attributed to the influence of a demon. Irene already has her suspicions that it's the one that got away. So to speak. On their travels, they learn a bit about Valak's demonic origins and learn that everyone being murdered is in some way related to St Lucy, patron saint of the blind whose eyes were kept as holy relics. Irene is also subjected to visions of Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), which lead her to France.

Intercut with these developments, we see Maurice working at a French boarding school as groundskeeper and maintenance man. He befriends a young Irish girl there, but we're shown several scenes of him speaking with an invisible force and acting, well, possessed. The girls play games in the attic that turn violent after they encounter a demonic goat that terrorizes them. Maurice's resistance crumbles until we become certain that Valak -- surprise! -- wasn't banished to hell at the end of the first film but instead, weakened, latched onto Maurice. Except this isn't a surprise to us, because we saw a sign of it on Maurice's neck at the end of the previous film. Another redundancy.

The incompetent screenplay by Ian B. Goldberg (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Eli, Fear the Walking Dead) doesn't stop there. After an early conversation between Irene and Debra (who are both wonderful and deserved a lot more to do) in which a doubting Debra asks about the miracle of the Eucharist and transubstantiation, I suspected we'd be treated to some miracle about that. After much ado, and Irene finally unmasks Valak -- again -- she needs the blood of Christ -- again -- to vanquish Valak -- again. But the precious vial of it from the first movie is gone, of course! What is she to do? Lo and behold, we're spoon-fed the explanation (in case you didn't see it coming) that Irene is in fact a descendant of St. Lucy, hence her visions and Valak's obsession with her, and so she uses the relic to stall Valak. Renewed with faith, Irene and Debra pray together and the wine (the school used to be a winery after it was also a convent?) spontaneously explodes into the blood of Christ and drowns Valak back to hell.

Except that Irene is still suspicious at film's end, we're not given any reason to think it didn't work this time. Which is infuriating, as we know that Maurice is yet to be exorcised by Lorraine Warren (who, played by Vera Farmiga, is also revealed to be a descendant of St. Lucy, which is a nice consummation of the sisterly casting choice). So somehow Valak will return in the timeline before The Conjuring, and it's just annoying to have this middling story in the meantime, forcing us to tread water before something exciting actually happens.

My biggest gripes so far have been the story, and that is fair. The performances are all solid, no question, and some of the effects are exciting. I personally really liked the demon goat, although its introduction feels more than a little like something out of The Da Vinci Code or Indiana Jones. I was annoyed at the prevalence and pedestrian quality of Valak's presence; while she's arguably more mysterious (read: shrouded in darkness to the point of incomprehensibility) here than in the previous film, there's no inventiveness to her appearance or behaviors here. She's just there, and we're desensitized to her frequent, obvious presence. I'd have preferred the Grand Guignol approach to her, but if not, then something more like in The Woman in Black. Besides Valak, the film wallows in its inability to produce earned fear, overutilizing slow pans and exaggerated sound effects to occasionally startle us rather than eke out any modicum of actual terror. It feels like the editors and producers called the shots with a stopwatch, every ten minutes or so requiring a loud bang or pop-out in order to continue.

Resurrection (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Rebecca Hall deserves so many more chances to headline elevated psychological horror, because between The Night House and now this, she's one of the best leading women in the genre. I sat down for Resurrection knowing nothing beyond its genre label, release date, and her name, and truthfully that's probably the best way to approach this film. It's a wild ride, one that is playing multiple games with itself and with us at the same time. While I won't necessarily recount the plot in my thoughts here, there will be spoilers -- because anything said about this movie is a "spoiler" -- so if you're at all interested in it, please stop reading and go watch it as soon as you can. 

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First things first: Rebecca Hall's Margaret is not a likable woman. We first meet her offscreen, as a young woman sits in her office telling her relationship woes to Margaret like to a confessor. When the camera cuts to her, she's seated uncomfortably perched on the edge of her desk in a pose straddling aggressively dismissive and forced casual. She tells the young woman -- a peer, colleague? An employee, assistant? Who knows! -- in striking, dominant terms that her boyfriend is a "sadist," using a tone of voice indicating that she knows all and there can be no alternative opinion. We all know someone like this, who is either too walled-off to properly relate to others or who is too wounded and hurt to have compassionate perspective. That doesn't stop Margaret from being immediately off-putting.

This translates outside of the workspace, where she has some illustrious job in biotechnology where she leads presentations on replacement therapy and the reorganization of cells. At home, she's a single mother of Abbie (Grace Kaufman), hovering and clinging and controlling as Abbie gets ready for college. Her household and her lifestyle are held prisoner by her sense of routine; for example, she takes a daily run that looks like boot camp (thanks to cold cinematography and icy editing), and in her house she's always either cleaning the spotless surfaces or lounging in a bathrobe while still dripping from her shower. She's kind of alone in this palatial existence -- beautiful production design subtly underscores her isolation and clinical minimalism -- and so she determinedly engages in a friends-with-benefits relationship with a married coworker. Well, "friends" with benefits, as she doesn't let down any emotional walls with him and only treats him like a transactional fuck-buddy despite his conflicted desires for her.

At a work conference, Margaret sees a man and everything changes. We won't learn who he is for some time, but she becomes agitated and sweaty, hyperventilating before she gets home and all but forbids Abbie from doing anything. Abbie naturally chalks it up to Margaret's looming empty nest syndrome, but there's a lot more going on, and as Margaret learns about strange things Abbie's been experiencing, her paranoia worsens. Abbie found a tooth in her wallet; Abbie got in an accident while riding a bike under the influence; they go to the mall and the man appears again before Margaret forcibly flees with Abbie. I thought this movie was about to become a story about the ways past trauma affects mother-daughter relationships in a world of predatory patriarchy, something between Women Talking and Alice, Darling, and I was ready for it. After all, generational trauma and mental illness are very much in vogue in our era of "elevated horror."

Then Margaret, in a roughly seven-minute monologue to the young coworker from the opening scene, reveals what's happening. The man she saw at the conference and the mall was David (Tim Roth), her ex from twentysomething years earlier, who she met at 18 and moved in with. He quickly became controlling and abusive, forcing her to self-harm and humiliate herself in acts of "kindnesses" to be worthy of his love and resources. When she eventually had a son, Ben, David became jealous to the point of possibly (probably) murdering him. To escape her blame, he tells her a lie so insidious, so cruel, so absolutely batshit crazy that some bizarre, manipulated, pained part of her broken consciousness believes him. Margaret's dedicated use of "sadist" earlier is finally made clear.

At this point in the film, the audience is asked for a crucial choice. We're either meant to think she's on the brink and completely untrustworthy, or to think compassionately for her experience and suffer the delusional aftereffects of abuse with her. This isn't a normal story of abuse -- disgusting, isn't it, that there is a "normal" or socially accepted understanding of typical abuse patterns -- like we've seen before. This is unhinged, totally bonkers stuff, and it's only though the filmmakers' calculated approach and artistic integrity that Margaret's revelation doesn't derail the whole movie. And it's from this moment, whatever we choose to feel and think, that the film changes its approach and plot, spinning violently into a psychological spiral between Margaret and David in which we're never sure who is the cat and who is the mouse, who is scarier and more potentially evil. Of course he is a pure monster, one that Roth is all too gleefully malicious to bring to life, but she's on the threshold of losing touch with reality entirely, through absolutely no fault of her own. 

The second half of this movie is the kind of psychological horror I love but has become quite rare these days; now, psychological horror is all about trauma and mental illness and always (always) carries some metaphorical monster who is also very real. Movies like Silent House and Black Swan and The Silence of the Lambs where the horror starts and ends in the minds of the protagonist and their adventure through a broken world are few and far between, but this one fits in their vein without the timely trappings of hot topics. As such, Resurrection is not a pleasant viewing experience; there are no "gotcha!" jump scares, no gory excesses to giggle about, no stylized monsters or mythology to unravel. There is just cruelty and menace and realistic -- if insane -- abuse. This is not the story of an abused woman getting revenge on her abuser. Not really. By the end, we don't know to what extent we can trust her as things get hallucinatory and almost supernatural (think along the aesthetic lines of Villeneuve's Enemy and Aster's Beau is Afraid), and/or to what extent she is suffering a breakdown. Then again, has she been trustworthy the whole time, or even sane? We are forced to relate to her perspective by the screenplay, editing, and cinematography, and we certainly want to because it's Hall and she's amazing. And there's a moment near the end, as David discusses himself and their relationship, when anyone who's ever been in an abusive relationship will relate a little too closely to the terrifyingly accurate language and ideas being used.

There's a lot to like about this movie for anyone interested in these topics. But it won't be for everyone, both in terms of concepts and content. The end will surely polarize even interested viewers, both because of the depraved darkness to which this movie sends us and because it goes for the gusto in terms of unhinged insanity for its finale. But it sticks to its guns, refuses to comfort us, and pushes us into a mindset I haven't experienced in a film in ages. Daring and fresh, haunting and nasty, this movie is unique and brave and wild, and I respect the hell out of it. Even if I may never choose to watch it again.

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

If all it takes to make you happy in a film is attractive leads and a cutesy, happily-ending story, you'll like this one. I need a bit more than surface-level romance and what amounts to nauseatingly situational comedy to enjoy even standard rom-coms, and this one taunts us with the promise of real meaty material before pulling out the rug and revealing the cheapest of foundations. And, I'll note, the title ironically lacks an Oxford comma.

Red, White & Royal Blue is adapted, poorly, from Casey McQuiston's debut novel, which is similarly cutesy and often trite, but features immeasurably better dialogue as well as some really wonderful insights into political life and privacy, queer camaraderie, and contemporary young adult virtual banter. On the other hand, the screenplay ignores all the West Wing-inspired bits of expository dialogue that simultaneously provides character and thematic insights in favor of the kind of mind-numbingly insipid blather you might hear from a Hallmark movie. The film's characters offer no wit whatsoever, and are allowed only the most glancing attempts at earned humor. One wonders why they are even attracted to each other beyond everyone being generally attractive and of course the similar situations in which the two eventual lovers find themselves as sons of heads of state. Similarity and appearance are the only things that matter in love, apparently, which is also a message producer Greg Berlanti championed in his Love, Simon some years ago. 

In case you don't know, the story concerns the world's two most public young men as they come to the realization that they are in love and have to figure out how to be in relationship without causing a media frenzy or international scandal. Alex (a winning Taylor Zakhar Perez) is the son of the American president (Uma Thurman, with a bizarre Texan accent and almost deadpan performance), enthusiastic about politics and eager to help his mother's re-election campaign but is often relegated to public appearances in which he escorts the VP's granddaughter Nora (Rachel Hilson, who is charming but miserably underused by the screenplay). At the film's start, they attend Prince Phillip's wedding, him being heir of England's throne over younger brother and "spare," Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine of 2021 Cinderella). Alex and Henry are cold at best, then Alex gets drunk and the two end up photographed on the floor covered in wedding cake.

Thus begins the mess of a romantic comedy in which the two antagonists become, of course, the protagonists. It's not original to see the hostile frenemies become lovers, though it is certainly nice to see queer men as the characters in question. When we finally learn, much later, the source of their dislike, it's an annoyingly silly reason that sets the film up for thematic failure, and I knew in that instant this would be a confectioner's fantasy rather than any kind of realistic romance. Afterward, the two young men are forced into a series of photo ops and interviews meant to prove to the world they are best friends, and naturally their enmity soon shifts into affection. The familiar beats, mind-numbing at best, occasionally spark interest for two main reasons. First, the attractive men do indeed consummate their relationship in a manner less like forever lovers and more like immature hookups, but they are filmed with surprising amount of prurient interest; this might be a cheap, modern recreation of a Jane Austen concept, but it's for an audience familiar with The Tudors.

Second, the film seems more interested with a concern for privacy regarding political leaders than with politics themselves. I don't hate that approach, though the film only really talks about issues of paparazzi and journalistic integrity rather than dramatizing any of it. The closest it comes is in the character of a political reporter named Miguel, a past fling of Alex who seems keen on reigniting their tryst and ends up outing them to the world. Miguel is interesting in that he code-switches very quickly when he runs into Alex in a coffee shop, speaking in Spanish to establish some kind of intimate kinship, which Alex immediately deflects. Alex and Henry, meanwhile, can't quite establish the relationship they seem to want (read: sex and more sex) due to geographical distance and constant scrutiny, but they sure manage to meet each other a lot, and one wonders on whose dime their flights are paid. They don't even know who they themselves are: Alex reveals late that he is bisexual, and while Henry knows he's gay he seems determined to pass as straight to appease his royal family. They can't articulate a future together because they can't identify themselves, and the whole thing spirals into a mental mess until the deus ex machina of a climax and denouement. How embarrassing for the writers to want to champion queer romance but be totally unable to do so in a believable or honest way.

And it's not just the writers' fault. Matthew Lopez, co-writer and director, can't quite figure out the aesthetic he wants beyond the gloss and glamour of Hallmark chintz. His editors hack up each scene to within an inch of its life and include endless and distracting bits of spoken bits of dialogue as visualized text messages, making lengthy montages wildly busy on screen and utterly redundant. Logic flies out the window at an increasingly alarming pace -- where is security at the New Year party, inside or out? -- and forced plot points are so contrived I audibly groaned while quickly refilling my drink. It's hard to be so annoyed at a film that clearly means well, but if this is the best a large studio like Prime can come up with these days, I shudder to think about the next decade of queer cinema. We deserve better. Yes, even for romantic comedies.

Blue Beetle (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

It's mostly delightful, and exactly what we expected, so this will be brief. Blue Beetle, the latest DCU feature, is one superhero I was completely unfamiliar with, and so it was really fun to be taken for a ride. And a ride it is, as a familiar and rote origin story for a smart-aleck young man learning to harness his newfound powers and to come of age at the same time. But there is a key difference this time around.

Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, this is the kind of culturally relevant -- and important -- superhero movie we're finally seeing in the 2020s. Namely: diverse and intentionally non-white. The MCU finally got a bit diverse with Black Panther and Eternals, Sony with the Spiderverse; the DCU has been more diverse in appearance if not in plot or theme with Black Adam and Birds of Prey. But this time, and lovingly so, they dive full in with a Latino family fully enmeshed in their cultural heritage. A significant amount of the film's dialogue is in Spanish, not unlike In the Heights, and much of the humor comes from their perspective as white people call them by the wrong names or they subvert (and embrace) various stereotypes.

As such, the film is also more colorful, kinetic, and fun in its delivery. The dull plot does allow for speeding through bits that would have, twenty years ago, needed time to breathe and explain itself; now the arc of these tales allows for a certain visual and aural shorthand. The music swells as a closeup on the titular alien device reveals its importance without a single breath of explanation. The protagonist, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena), touches it and it violently takes over his body a la Venom or Tom Holland's Spidey with Iron Man's upgrades, and we don't need scene after scene of the alien talking to him to understand exactly their forced and humorous dynamic. Its breakneck pacing and rapid-fire dialogue, especially from featured actor George Lopez, make it often laugh-out-loud funny. 

Despite these variances in points of interest and visible diversity, the film is remarkably unremarkable. That is, its over-reliance on CGI that looks cartoonish and often unfinished will undoubtedly turn off hardcore fans. Its dull story and woefully underdeveloped plot won't win over many casual fans. Its villains -- and I'm truly sorry, Susan Sarandon, I really do love you -- are vapid and unspecific in every possible way. The closest they come to relevant is when, during a horrific raid on the Reyes house, Sarandon's character (Victoria Kord, mogul of her family's company) flies overheard in a helicopter with searchlight, screaming "Round them up!" to her riot-gear-sporting soldiers about the Latino family. It's gross -- intentionally so -- and that's about it for her character depth. 

A cursory discussion, like this one, will easily note the formulaic approach in terms of theme: a villain says the hero's love for family makes him weak and he ends up proving that idea wrong. Imperialism is bad, monopolies are dangerous, love prevails and family wins, and of course bravery is a prime virtue. A more nuanced discussion will consider the ways in which economic disparity controls the lives of disenfranchised communities; like the fire people in the recent Elemental, the Reyes family and their barrio are the product of historical poverty despite having solid jobs and homes and lives. There is no small discussion of gentrification and being relegated to locations of problematic social and municipal services. Jaime himself has a degree, a positive outlook, and gumption for work, but his skin color and accent and address will always limit his future.

And while the film is certainly "about" these issues, it dilutes these valuable messages with typical subplots of budding romance, the loss of a father, a plodding violent threat who is more machine than man, and an elder with secret past and hilarious heroic ability. Instead of leaning into and crafting articulate observations about generational disenfranchisement, inner city racial dynamics, or even the skirted issues of equitable employment, the film does do a few other important things. The screenplay and actors mine culturally specific references to telenovelas and Mexican superheroes, the School of the Americas, and more. So it doesn't break the mold, and it doesn't bring much that's new to the genre, but it is a fresh voice with a lot of heart and a lot of good representation, and that makes it a win in my book.

Heart of Stone (2023)

Score: 1.5 / 5

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

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

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

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

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

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

The premise is brilliant. Taking a single chapter of a classic -- one often skipped in adaptations, or reduced to a feverish montage sequence -- and dramatizing it as a standalone work. It's a much smarter way of making a new movie about an old monster than something like Dracula Untold or Renfield, in my humble literary purist's opinion. Something about this particular story, too, feels catered to a dynamic and terrifying horror film. It's one of the scariest chapters in Bram Stoker's novel, written in segments of a captain's log as crew members of the titular ship start disappearing and paranoia sets in. The isolated nature of a ship on the high seas and the limited number of resources available turn the episode into an And Then There Were None situation, but with a bloodthirsty monster stalking the decks by night.

But telling this story is not without its risks, not least because of course its premise allows for remarkably little tension or suspense. Anybody even remotely familiar with the source material or its plentiful adaptations knows full well the fate of the Demeter and its crew. Everybody -- but everybody -- knows, moreover, that Dracula is the monster hiding onboard and that he does indeed make it safely from Transylvania to England. So if you're the kind of audience member who wants to be surprised by plot, and who feels jaded by anything familiar, steer clear of this voyage.

For me, director André Øvredal's (Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) latest film is at best a middling work between these exciting possibilities and dangerous pitfalls. His flair for thickly stylized visuals is on full force here, and clearly he's enjoying making movies with larger budgets these days. The problem with this is that he spends a lot of time with wide shots of the beautifully realized ship -- the production designers here deserve accolades -- drifting through sunrise- or sunset-adjacent ocean vistas and these repeated shots leech any claustrophobic tension from the film. The horror would be more effective had he taken more inspiration from Lifeboat than Life of Pi, if that makes sense. I'm glad he made a beautiful movie, but fewer color-graded waterscapes and more long takes in the bowels of the ship would have made it more appropriately atmospheric and effectively scary.

Not that there aren't scares aplenty, and most of them are expertly conceived and executed. By the time the Demeter leaves Varna and takes to the ocean, we're aware of mysterious boxes in its hull with diabolic insignia. We meet Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham), his grandson Toby (Woody Norman), first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), and most importantly, last-minute addition Clemens (Corey Hawkins). Clemens, a doctor, is fortunately added to the ship's roster, as his medical knowledge and skillset will soon come in handy. Perhaps the greatest surprise of the film is when, not long into the voyage, one of the Romanian boxes is accidentally opened and a stowaway is revealed. Her name is Anna, and she's played by the brilliant Aisling Franciosi; sickly and pale, and clearly afraid, she requires multiple blood transfusions facilitated by the good doctor.

While Anna's presence is unexpected, it does thankfully add some variation to the cast list. She was apparently offered to the vampire by her village; the idea seems to be that she is his reserve blood supply, which is creepy and weird, and doesn't make full sense as Dracula seems much more intent on eating the animals and crew. Each time night falls, the movie takes on the pacing of Alien, with a particularly monstrous Dracula preying on various seamen. I personally didn't like how monstrous they made him, though the mostly practical effects are wonderful. He's such an interesting character, and most of what makes him interesting is taken away when he's portrayed as a nonverbal gargoyle-like demon. I'd have much preferred, as in the novel, to see a shadowy man wandering around the ship, because that level of uncanny menace is much scarier to me.

But the internal logic of the film -- whether a fault of editor or writer -- hamstrings even these attempts at effective horror. The first scene of the film is of the Demeter washing ashore in Whitby, England, so that just in case you weren't quite sure what would happen to the ship (if not its crew or cargo), any curiosity or doubt is immediately put to rest. It's not unlike walking through a haunted house with a lit flashlight: some things may still frighten you, but you've got a lifeline and lots of warning time. Similarly, though perhaps less a problem for some viewers, the film's ending does not match up with the source material, which to me marginally defeats the entire premise of this film. In fact, even Dracula's modus operandi doesn't quite match up, and I was distinctly annoyed that the film suggests merely his bite can "infect" someone and make them become a vampire as well, which is absolutely unfounded in Stoker's work. The manner in which Dracula "escapes" the ship for England, the manner of the death of some of his victims, and the survival of one crew member who then embarks on a vendetta aren't supported by the novel, and I wish the screenwriters had asked themselves what exactly their goal was, then, in dramatizing this one chapter. The final minutes feel like a cheap gamble to open the door for a sequel, which is patently absurd.

Haunted Mansion (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

My most anticipated movie of the summer might also be my favorite. Haunted Mansion might be the third film adaptation of my favorite Disney ride (and, frankly, a favorite Disney property, period) -- after the delightful 2003 feature and the 2021 Muppets streamer -- but it's the best one yet. Star-studded, kinetic, uproariously funny and surprisingly scary, it's a nearly perfect addition to Disney's live action features of late and a delicious way to usher in the spooky season.

First things first: it keeps it simple. Disney has had some trouble with bloated, convoluted stories in the past, but with Katie Dippold's (The Heat, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) screenplay and Justin Simien's (Dear White People, Bad Hair) direction, this one is pared down to a streamlined and relevant plot. Recently widowed Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her young son Travis (Chase Dillon) move from New York into a glorious antique manor in Louisiana. Almost immediately, they are chased out by its very active ghostly inhabitants. But the ghosts follow them away, drawing them repeatedly back to Gracey Manor until they give in and seek help. Gathering a team of astrophysicist Ben (LaKeith Stanfield), medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), priest Kent (Owen Wilson), and professor Bruce (Danny DeVito), the team takes up residence in the house to try and free the house of its increasingly dangerous hauntings.

While some may decry the blatant humor of the screenplay, I found it refreshing in a way not dissimilar to Jungle Cruise, especially to help temper the shockingly dark aesthetic and themes of this film. Each character, especially comedic character actors Haddish, DeVito, and Wilson, is given some ham-fisted one-liners, but their delivery and the nonstop pace make the entire affair delightful to the point that I was often breathless while laughing from one zinger to the next. And there are a few adult-oriented innuendos in true Disney style that really make the movie accessible to everyone. That said, it's also refreshing that there is no real romance in this film -- a small hint between Ben and Gabbie, but never explicit -- which makes it both more palatable for its audience and reliable as drama. 

Alongside its comedy, however, Haunted Mansion features some of the darkest material from the studio in many years. Gabbie and Travis are still reeling from the loss of their husband/father, and the movie leans heavily into the timely (and almost played-out, these days) trope of supernatural horror dealing with grief. Ben, arguably the protagonist of this story, is also still in debilitating mourning for the loss of his wife, which helps him connect with and help Travis in a way no other character does. Stanfield brings his always-reliable dedication to the role that could easily have been played as bland or starched; he fills every single beat with depths of emotion and weighty character history that the screenplay barely spells out. He brings a gravitas that is much needed, especially during the first half of the film, that stops the whole affair from derailing itself with speedy editing and an abundance of comedy.

Because things do indeed go dark, so to speak, when the real antagonist shows up. The house itself is of course the draw, and it showcases every moment from the ride in fabulous detail. Endless halls, impossible staircases, backwards spinning clocks and floating candelabras, ghostly portraits and busts, the ballroom, the attic, the stretching antechamber, the graveyard. It's all there, populated with the lovable and dubious ghosts that have become family for us niche community of fans. When the Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto) shows up, things lurch into the second half, where the plot really kicks into high gear; I was surprised Disney wanted to showcase a serial killer as their villain, but this is obviously the material best suited for such a character, and he's a fittingly spooky addition. With the ghost's malicious goal of collecting and corrupting souls, Ben especially is driven to a place where we can experience the film's message that grief makes us vulnerable, and that vulnerability can help us connect with other hurting souls and live our lives more fully while we have life to enjoy.

It's not all perfect. Editing in the first half is jumpy and jarring, to say nothing of the screenplay, which could just as easily have cut the shenanigans of various ghosts following the characters home and forcing them to return to the mansion. Jump-starting them all at the mansion might have served this story better, allowed us more time with the characters to interact with each other and the ghosts, a la The Haunting of Hill House or House on Haunted Hill. There is no barbershop quartet of stone busts, sadly, and while "Grim Grinning Ghosts" gets a jazzy new dance version at the end, I'd have liked the full song at some point. And then there's the film's one true disappointment for me: Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota looks weird, sounds awful, and does nothing interesting despite being, arguably, the most iconic part of the IP. Her stilted dialogue doesn't rhyme and her delivery feels disinterested and awkward at best, reminding me a bit of Jodie Foster's bizarre bad French and disconnected demeanor in Elysium. I may never recover from the disappointment of that character and performance, but the rest of the movie is just about perfect for my tastes. I'm already ready to watch it again!

Talk to Me (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

We're used to stories of high schoolers or college kids doing dangerous things like drugs or dares, and those stories are familiar to film as well. Many classic slashers cashed in on these coming-of-age dramedies, as they usually are, by suggesting "rules" and punishments such as doing drugs or having sex will get you killed, as will sneaking away from the adults or being alone too long. These kinds of moralistic messages have resurfaced somewhat in recent years as social media has led to real-life horrors like violent chatrooms that spawn school shootings or viral trends that have kids doing scary or reckless acts to gain notoriety. Even some recent horror movies or thrillers like Truth or Dare and Nerve have dramatized these trends to usually less-than glowing critical and popular response.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached Talk to Me, the latest indie horror from A24 and the directorial debut of the Philippou brothers (who previously worked in the filming crew of The Babadook). The familiar tale concerns a ceramic-looking severed hand, covered in graffiti and symbols that suggest a storied history; a person grasping it and speaking the title will allow the person to see a deceased person. This is no mere monkey's paw, however, for the living person can subsequently allow the ghost to enter and possess the living body. Again, none of this is particularly new or interesting material, but it allows for storytelling in a variety of ways. Talk to Me works best by choosing a less-traveled path and executing its artistic choices with a grim confidence surprising from new filmmakers.

To start, there is never a single question about the supernatural effects of the hand, which isn't given a name or title itself. It's taken largely as the deadly serious device it is; a few characters passively comment that the possessed folks are just faking it or that it's some kind of elaborate hoax, but most characters know it to be true and so do the filmmakers. That such an item exists and is casually passing around over an unknown amount of time is pretty chilling, especially given its introduction to us in a series of social media-related posts about it. Anyone who sees these videos is treated to a gruesome, Grand Guignol spectacle of rolled-over black eyes, guttural voice changes, and some deeply creepy pronouncements of a usually morbid or suggestive nature. The heightened social awareness of this has turned into a series of house parties in which inebriated adolescents take turns "doing it" and filming each other. It's something between hazing and a rite of passage, documented for the world to see and comment upon. That is to say, it's eminently plausible, like somebody mentioning eating Tide pods online, or falling under the influence of a Slender Man. 

The kids, moreover, treat it less as a game than as a drug. Even the filmmakers depict these party scenes as something between a circle jerk and a séance, often utilizing EDM-type music over montages of various young adults acting fools while under the influence, as the camera whirls around them dizzyingly. Once possessed, the sound drops out and the camera jolts back with the character in their chair as their eyes black out; they often shiver, choke, sweat, and stop breathing in ways that, frankly, look life-threatening. But thankfully the resident "experts" on the hand are at hand (pardon me) in the form of Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio), who currently own the cursed object. They have rules about this dance of death -- though it's left totally unclear how these rules became known -- including lighting a candle to attract spirits, tying the possessed person to a chair, and limiting their exposure to ninety seconds.

All this is just the setup, and from here the story takes a typical path forward. Australian teens Mia (an excellent Sophie Wilde), her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and Jade's younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) go to one of these morbid house parties to experiment with the hand. Things go well -- that is, as well as summoning ghosts and inviting possessions can go -- until Mia lets a spirit in. We're allowed, in this moment, to see the ghost she sees, and the ghosts in this movie are nothing short of terrifying (thank goodness they opted for quality makeup over special effects). One spirit that possesses her looks over at young Riley and declares that he is desired by other spirits present. It's a moment of pure horror, one that bleakly allows us to guess at the plot's trajectory. It's especially troubling as Mia, whose mother died by suicide two years prior and who is unable to process that grief, seems a little too eager to reconnect with her mother; she has effectively become an intimate sibling to Jade and Riley. She wants her mother back, but she certainly doesn't want to lose her new chosen family.

So when the spirit that possesses Riley announces itself as Mia's mother, Mia is forced into a horrific headspace she wasn't prepared for, and she keeps talking to the ghost well past the 90-second mark. Riley ends up in a coma after a vicious episode of self-harm, and it seems less and less likely Mia's beloved mother is really in there. It's helpful that the performances are uniformly excellent, especially when the characters do stupid or cruel things to each other; in that way, it's very much a Gen Z - oriented film that pokes fun even as it humanizes a generation vastly different from those classic slashers I mentioned earlier. Morality has shifted, socialization has shifted, and this follows the vein of Bodies Bodies Bodies in humanizing and almost satirizing the conceits of our current younger generation. It doesn't talk down, it talks to and from, which makes all the difference.

Naturally, all this suggests that a franchise is waiting to be born, particularly as so little about the hand is revealed and several characters remain quite alive by film's end. One imagines a burgeoning series -- like A24 finally embraced with Ti West's X trilogy -- that may include a prequel about the hand's origins (or about Mia's mother) and a sequel about Jade's family moving on. Or, you know, anything else related to the hand. I kind of hope that happens, because as it stands, Talk to Me is fine for a simple, spooky viewing, but doesn't really offer much meat to chew. And that's okay, especially for an introduction to broader ideas to come, again, much like we saw in X. This one is mostly about the possessive dangers of grief and the ways we hurt our loved ones while in thrall to despair; it's a theme worth revisiting, but it's quickly becoming old hat these days. Interestingly, and if this becomes a series, I hope more films explore this, the film's ending ties into Mia's other primary character trait, which is a willingness to isolate herself from reality, which is also arguably a point to be made about her generation (and maybe our culture as a whole since 2016 and again since 2020). 

Oppenheimer (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The American Prometheus, referring of course to the mythic titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, is J. Robert Oppenheimer, the infamous physicist who developed the atomic bomb. This title isn't just about his invention or its valuable and dangerous fallout (so to speak); it also refers to his politically and existentially tortured life afterward. Christopher Nolan's newest film, for him unusual as a biopic, is a cerebral character study of one of the most interesting and consequential figures in human history. Taking place over three hours we're treated to a dual storyline, again one of Nolan's trademarks, here emphasizing two very different ways to destroy the world.

The first plotline, filmed in color, is subtitled "Fission," referring to the splitting of an atom's nucleus (and the means by which Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed). It dramatizes Oppenheimer's life on his way to his "great deed," from his times in various European universities to his PhD in the '20s and '30s, from his dabblings in communism to his marriage to Kitty (Emily Blunt) and his affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), and of course his appointment to lead the top secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, circa 1942. It's the lead up to this last that makes up the driving force of the film, as even the score indicates a ticking clock toward doomsday. When General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) verifies that Oppenheimer is not, in fact, communist, he's put in charge of the race to beat the Nazis in creating the first atomic bomb. The race is personal for Oppenheimer, who was Jewish, and he has fears of what Heisenberg may be developing; contracting his own scientists, he moves them and their families to a secret location with their families, building a town around them to keep everything close and tight-lipped.

Filmed in IMAX by the magnificent Hoyte van Hoytema, the location of this town is beautifully constructed against the beautiful scenery of New Mexico's deserts. It's a bit chilling, too, knowing what will happen to parts of the world in the wake of atomic disasters. The filmmakers here seem intent on impressing that contrast to the audience, often interjecting images of curling flames, flying debris, and sparkling explosions between images of Oppenheimer's intense, tortured face. His life, as brought to award-worthy performance by Cillian Murphy, seems a similarly tortured landscape, occasionally flaring with personal faults of impulsive pride and lustful greed. He's a Greek tragic hero, often dissociating from the hullabaloo of his life to think about his own fantasies of physics, sex, and impending doom. One wonders what it would be like to change the course of world history by creating the thing that could annihilate us all; Murphy delivers that.

The second plotline, in black and white, is subtitled "Fusion," a process by which two nuclei are combined and releases far more catastrophic energy than fission. This part of the film doesn't make as much sense for a while, as we follow Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to get approved by the Senate as commerce secretary in the '50s. He's being held up and though he doesn't know why, he strongly suspects it's due to the influence of his old rival, Oppenheimer. The physicist, haunted by the hell of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had urged President Truman (Gary Oldman) to restrict increased nuclear weapon development, which Truman dismissed as weak. We learn, through flashbacks (if that word is even applicable amidst all the time jumps here), that as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission headed by Strauss, Oppenheimer advocated against additional nuclear research that would lead to the creation of a hydrogen bomb. Strauss resented Oppenheimer for this and other perceived slights, and so proceeded to assassinate Oppenheimer's reputation and credibility during the latter's security hearing in 1954, resulting in neutralizing his influence on security as well as policy. The McCarthy-era fervor is brought to full flavor in these scenes, though thankfully Strauss gets his comeuppance eventually, primarily at the hands of testifier David Hill (Rami Malek), who publicly reveals the personal grudge match.

It's a fascinating way to frame the title character's life, and one that remarkably humanizes both the character and the director, Nolan being a prime case of director who notoriously leeches his films of sentiment or "humanity." This is his Amadeus, if you will, in which "great" men collapse under the weight of their own prides, jealousies, and pettiness. Add in, if you will, other personal faults hinted at but never really fleshed out by the film, including his adultery and Kitty's suffering and alcoholism, and Nolan is really going for gold here; that said, this film only strengthened my annoyance that Nolan is incapable of writing well-rounded female characters or of directing female actors (Pugh and Blunt are among the best, and they are wildly unsupported here in garishly archetypal roles that only use their bodies and emotions to function). It's a shame, because Kitty has a few lines that reveal her sharply tactical sense of logic, and some of Oppenheimer's worst choices would have been avoided had he listened.

On a similarly personal note, I found it dismaying that the film callously avoids direct reckoning with the bombings that effectively ended World War II. The arguments for and against the use of those bombs are voiced, briefly, but little to no consideration of the historical reality of those arguments is provided. Was Japan too determined to quit, or were they on their knees at that point in the conflict? The film espouses neither perspective, choosing instead a maddeningly cryptic approach that makes us, like Oppenheimer, get a bit paranoid. Leave it to Nolan to give us a puzzle box rather than a coherent story. It's this that, while feeling very much like the filmmaker, reminded me of several other auteurs; I've never considered Nolan as anything but himself, but this film repeatedly reminded me of Terrence Malick (especially in editorial style), Oliver Stone (especially in the hearing scenes, and with Oldman, Blunt, and Downey's almost camp performances), and of course Stanley Kubrick in its bleak sense of humor (a la Dr. Strangelove and when, notably, government officials debate over which Japanese cities to bomb). 

Like it or not, enjoy it or not, this is a masterful and galvanizing film, one that perhaps best exemplifies the best (and worst) tendencies of its profoundly complex creator. Never has Nolan so seemingly identified with his own subject, and never has his own theoretical interests meshed so flawlessly with those of the story he tells. Some of the best critical writing this year will be about this film, how its relentless editing matches some obscure physicist's understanding of human psyche, radiation fallout, or cosmic structure. Because ultimately that's the puzzling game Nolan plays, and frankly I don't much care for that level of masturbatory cleverness. What I love about this movie is its old-school approach to acting and melodrama, its deep understanding of the boundaries between personal and collective identity (and trauma), and its respect for the audience, along with its characters, to decide for ourselves the significance of these potentially world-shattering events and, worse, ideas.