Strange Darling (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

And the award for most unforgivably overlooked film of the year goes to... drumroll, please...

Strange Darling.

Saying anything too detailed about this film will spoil it, so do yourself a favor. Look up no plot points, no summaries, no reviews. Just watch it. If anything, check trigger warnings, as there is some terribly gory violence and a sequence of violent (grim but consensual) sexual activity.

J.T. Mollner's writing and direction is some of the best of the year, incisive and timely even as it subverts every expectation you could attach to its outcome. Giovanni Ribisi's cinematography (I know, it surprised me too) is glorious and stunning in grainy, chromatically vivid 35mm film. Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher, MTV's Scream, and more) and Kyle Gallner (scream king of Smile, Smile 2, and many more) churn out the best performances yet of their careers, respectively, in their sadistic cat-and-mouse game. Barbara Hershey even shows up, which is always a good thing. Edited to pretentious perfection, this thriller is indeed a nonstop thrill ride that had me constantly gasping for air even as I chuckled my way through.

Don't look up anything. Don't hesitate. Curl up for a quiet movie night, eliminate any distractions, try not to grind your teeth, and enjoy. Strange Darling deserves all your energy.

Your Monster (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

This Halloween release went under my radar, but I've finally seen it and it's a delight. Horror-comedies have been increasing of late, to varying effect, but few lean into romance with gusto. Your Monster capably -- I might say uniquely -- handles all three genres separately and manages to combine them in a deeply satisfying, frustratingly safe, and shockingly brutal manner. Tonally, it's a series of soft punches that feel comforting until you realize it has burrowed under your skin and into your heart.

Melissa Barrera plays Laura in one of the most offbeat and welcome performances we've yet seen from her. The rising scream queen (who can also sing like an angel, in case you forgot about In the Heights) here is about as miserable as imaginable: while in cancer treatment, Laura's longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) unceremoniously dumps her, not wishing to be her caretaker, sending her belongings to Laura's mom's house and disinviting her to audition for his new theatrical production (that she helped develop). Clearly, it's a bad breakup, so Laura's friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) takes her from the hospital to her mom's house, where she might recuperate in piece(s).

There she encounters Monster (Tommy Dewey), a hairy beast apparently lurking in the closets of her childhood home for years. Though their initial encounter is frightening, and Monster wants the unwelcome house guest gone, they develop a tentative mutually helpful alliance to abide together for a few weeks. Surprisingly, Monster even likes theatre, so they bond over shared interests. Monster eventually encourages Laura to take the reins on her own life and to go audition for the role written for herself. She does, only to be cast as the understudy, doomed to watch Jacob flirting with the new star. But Laura is no pushover, and with Monster's help, she'll continue navigating the perils of love and life at home and at work.

Written and directed by Caroline Lindy, Your Monster wears its heart on its sleeve, sometimes to its detriment. Monster looks like something from an SNL skit or a community theatre Beauty and the Beast, and his wackiness is charming from the get-go. Plotwise, there's some teenage-y scheming for love and revenge framed by lots of insider angst in the theatre industry, as performers vie for the spotlight and regularly stab each other in the back (a la A Chorus Line). Though Lindy apparently wrote the story based on her own experience being dumped during cancer treatment, there seems to be connective tissue between this romp and last year's Lisa Frankenstein, both in genre-bending thematic conceits and an irreverent camp tone. Too, both end with a rather emotionally empowering catharsis as the female leads embrace their darker impulses to grow and assert themselves with the help of rage and passion denied them by sexist culture (aided by a distinctly non-normative new romantic partner).

Wacky and strange as it is, Your Monster is definitely worth a watch, and would best screen in a group of likeminded friends. It's very much for theatre fans and rom-coms -- even while poking fun at the holes in their typical tropes -- more than it is for horror fans. It's never particularly scary. Its music doesn't quite fit, and its messaging is more obvious than it should be, but for a blossoming of style and substance in tandem for a predictable but enjoyable ride through multiple genres, you could do much worse than an hour and a half falling in love with your own monster.

Origin (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Ava DuVernay is at her best with real life stories grappling with social structures and widespread injustices, and she tends to make provocative statements for the present rooted in careful consideration of history. Her most recent film, Origin, was released with little fanfare over a year ago, but I'm so glad to have finally seen it, ambitious and unusual a narrative as it is. Essentially, it's a biopic depicting the life and theories developed by Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste. How do you turn an academic scholar's life and ideas into a narrative? It's a tough question, and I can scarcely think of many that would take on such a task, but DuVernay's screenplay and direction make the case for a brilliant, daring new biographical film subgenre.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Wilkerson enduring a series of personal crises while attempting to fulfill her editor's demands. She needs to get another book out, especially one that could deal with ongoing, increasing crises in the United States. The murder of Trayvon Martin spurs her editor (Blair Underwood) to pressure her to write about the hot topic as he sees her as uniquely capable to speak to a hurting nation. Wilkerson has her trepidations, and she explicitly describes her method as needing to "be inside the story" which will require time. Much like our experience of reading Wilkerson's real life writings or even approaching this dense, multifaceted film will take time and perseverance.

Though it's nominally an "adaptation" of Wilkerson's work Caste, Origin is more accurately a biographical snapshot of Wilkerson's personal life and professional interest in her subject matter at the time of composition than it is a dramatization of her thesis and research itself. Family trials beset her, including tragedies involving her mother (Emily Yancy) and husband (Jon Bernthal) that compel her to rely ever more on herself, her work, and the voice she needs to put to words regarding pain in the world around her. Her tribulations provide valuable insight into her ideas, allowing her to see Martin's murder not as the result of racism on its own, but rather in fact as a much broader, more invisible system at work in the US and around the globe.

Anyone familiar with Wilkerson's work knows what I'm talking about, and if you haven't, I'm not going to summarize it here. Suffice it to say that racism in fact is more a symptom than a problem, and resorting to racism to explain something as phenomenologically pervasive as the murdering of innocent young Black men is in fact a restrictive lens. But, as we all learned back in the day from Reading Rainbow, you shouldn't just take my word for it. Read her material and watch the film. DuVernay's adept screenplay masterfully weaves its way through Wilkerson's main theoretical pillars with aplomb even as it invites and encourages us to learn more on our own. Tying the violent aftermath of American slavery to Nazi war crimes against humanity and the degrading brutality of India's caste system, Wilkerson discovers and presents compelling evidence that ideologically link systemic systems of oppression, despite the naysayers (dramatized in a notable dinner scene, as Connie Nielsen attempts to challenge Ellis-Taylor on her intended scholarship). 

Formally, the film offers as much to compel viewers as it does to instruct and dramatize Wilkerson's work. DuVernay's cinematographer views everything in 16mm film which sidesteps the common pitfall of historical films using contrived lenses or color schemes to indicate alternate settings in time and place. Jumping between examples could make the film lurch uncomfortably, but the filmmakers keep the form consistent, helping us connect the daring thesis on visual terms as well as cerebral. Aurally hushed, the film feels intimate and tactile, like we're poring over historical records in a library alongside our protagonist, providing the scholarly insight room to strike us with awe and the actors room to nail us with pitch-perfect melodrama to help move the story along. Bernthal and Ellis-Taylor are exellent, and Niecy Nash even pops in for a few surprisingly intense and tender scenes as Wilkerson's cousin. One scene stuck out to me as both annoying and dispiritingly obvious -- if you know, you know, but it's when Wilkerson calls a plumber (Nick Offerman) to stop her basement from leaking and he arrives with a MAGA hat proudly on his head -- and I wish the filmmakers had made a more nuanced attempt to feel urgent or relevant. But as a dramatic account of astonishing journalism and the fraught process of crafting contemporary social theory, Origin is as poetic, contemplative, and emotionally and intellectually devastating as any award-bait films in recent memory. Weird, sure, and not always entertaining, but staunchly accessible, brave, and important.

Juror #2 (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

With the press indicating it might be his final film, 94-year-old Clint Eastwood churns out another feature in Juror #2. His work as both actor and director has hit notable high and low points, and his directorial work has gotten increasingly and obnoxiously tainted by his political messaging, but Eastwood is still a prolific and skilled proficient. Known for his efficiency behind the camera, Eastwood here tackles a convoluted and compelling courtroom drama as if it were a thriller. If you know me, you know I love a courtroom drama: by nature, their writing has to be brilliant. While screenwriter Jonathan Abrams is not a name I'm familiar with, his work in this particular mystery is admirable, perhaps most because it's not, strictly speaking, a mystery at all.

In Savannah, Georgia -- setting to one of Eastwood's most tonally unique films, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -- at a time that seems to be close to the present day, journalist and recovering alcoholic Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is summoned and selected for jury duty. Though he does not wish to leave his at-risk wife home alone during her third trimester, duty calls, and he seems hell-bent on fulfilling it. The case: a year prior, Kendall Carter and her boyfriend James Sythe had a fight at a bar on the outskirts of town and was subsequently found dead under a nearby bridge. As opening statements wrap up, Kemp is struck with the horrific realization that he was at that bar the night of the fight. Distressed by his wife's stillborn twins, he went to that bar to mull things over over a glass of whiskey; he remembers not drinking and fleeing the bar in shame and regret, pulling out in the rain, and driving away before hitting something that vanished. Was it a deer? Or is he, juror number two, actually guilty for Carter's death?

It's a shocking revelation, all the more so because it happens so early in the film. Tension immediately ratchets as we watch Kemp decide how and if he might recuse himself, how to get his own legal counsel (from his AA sponsor and lawyer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, who urges him to keep quiet and do nothing). Sythe's public defender (Chris Messina) squares off with the county prosecutor running for DA (Toni Collete with, frankly, a gobsmackingly evocative if cartoonish accent) and the case proceeds through typically frenetic, peripatetic hoops of evidence and testimony. Finally, the jury is sequestered in deliberation, and they unanimously vote to convict Sythe.

Well, almost. Kemp is the holdout, and he attempts to Henry Fonda the shit out of his fellow jurors. It's compelling due to his tenuous culpability, and his efforts get frighteningly close to Jean Valjean's self-torment at the possibility of having another man pay for his crimes. He seems always on the verge of breaking, but then he'll do something desperate or stupid to cover his own ass, as when an ex-detective juror (JK Simmons) begins searching for his own evidence that would lead to Kemp and so Kemp leaks this illegality to their bailiff. Kemp grows distant from his wife (Zoey Deutch), who grows suspicious, especially after the prosecutor starts snooping around.

I won't spoil anything else, because courtroom dramas hinge on being compelling on their own unfolding of events, except to say that this film has a lot of annoying improbabilities. It's not a strictly realistic film, which did distract me more than usual. Too many convenient and unlikely coincidences make it all a bit untenable, especially for a story that requires narrative empathy to function, and its central conceit (that a sober and sane man could kill someone, have no realization of it, and then completely forget about it until it all flashes back to him a year later) strains credulity to its breaking point. And by its climax, Kemp's characterization surprisingly and unsatisfyingly flips without insight or justification from the screenplay or performances.

But this is an old-fashioned film with pleasures in store for anyone willing to bypass such shortcomings. It's the kind of mainstream feel-good procedural that pops up once in a while, with precedents from To Kill a Mockingbird to Where the Crawdads Sing, from The Verdict to any John Grisham adaptations from the '80s or '90s. Its middling budget -- all the money going to a wide cast of stars -- helps ground the film, and its unwieldy story develops a momentum of its own purely as a result of its integrity and determination. It's okay to have a straightforward genre flick that doesn't necessary do much in terms of novelty, seeks pure entertainment value, and encourages its audience to thoughtfully reflect and speculate. "What would you do in this situation?" Even trite questions like that can launch stimulating post-screening conversations with material this rich. And, whatever you think of Eastwood's layered criticisms of government, police and prosecutorial misconduct, personal liberties for rogue anarchy, and the judicial system in general, the denouement of Juror #2 will leave you breathless. So be sure to see it with other people, and plan to chat for a while afterwards. Eastwood is more transparent than usual, which makes this moral mess a doozy to try and concisely stake any claims in; it's a welcome change of tone from his overtly libertarian efforts of late.

Lee (2024)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Cinematographer and television director Ellen Kuras debuts as a feature film director with Lee, a wartime biopic that was released piecemeal in the US as awards season heated up. Kuras, whose work includes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer of Sam, Bamboozled, Blow, and A Little Chaos, reunites here with Kate Winslet for a project more grounded in reality than what she usually captures on camera. Perhaps that's because she's using a different cinematographer, but I think it's also due to her surprising subject matter. Kuras understands what being a photographer is all about, how it involves a curious blending of intrusive and unobtrusive observation and a fierce determination to be present in moments when and where things happen. Coming out the same year as Civil War, which covers similar ground in fictional/speculative terms, Lee never manages to be as interesting or urgent as it wants, though it is a diverting and satisfying two hours.

The story concerns Lee Miller, a former NYC fashion model and urban bohemian who lived in France before marrying an artist and academic and moving to London. Working for Vogue by the time WWII erupts, she becomes a special war correspondent starting with the Blitz, navigating (and flouting) laws and restrictions designed to keep women away from potentially dangerous stories. Embedded with American forces, she photographs the Allied invasion of France and liberation of Paris, reconnecting with her French contacts and learning about the thousands of people who "went missing" during Nazi occupation. She and her journalist partner, David Scherman (Andy Samberg, in an uncharacteristic but welcome performance), scour the frontlines before finally getting footage in Buchenwald and Dachau shortly after those camps were liberated. A small climax of the film occurs when, just prior to Germany's surrender, they get to Munich and take pictures in Hitler's apartment, including the famous image of a naked Miller in his tub.

That's really the story, a simplistic and streamlined chronology of Miller's career. Kuras adds very little art to the proceedings, though she's bound by a screenplay attempting to recreate an entire life in a short amount of time. Written apparently by committee, it's disappointing that the film provides almost no insight into either Miller's own identity or the women carving out their own place in an industry unwilling to let them. Kate Winslet performs with her typical excellence, but even her likability -- here stilted to a fault, intentionally, to better depict the somewhat curmudgeonly, disillusioned nature of a career on frontlines -- can't effectively round out her flat, opaque character as it is written. If anything, Winslet and Kuras seem determined to showcase not the woman behind the camera but rather the phenomenon of any photographer who seeks to reveal truth in others while actively concealing herself. The former model and abstract bohemian becomes hard-boiled by the atrocities of war and the infringements of a male-dominated job market, and while that could offer interesting insight, Lee stops short of such epiphany. 

If anything, perhaps the centerpiece of Miller in Hitler's tub could have been a short film, and the whole thing summed up thus. After all, for a world-weary and likely traumatized war correspondent to whip off her clothes and pose like an art student in the tub of a fascist dictator, there seems to be a curious surrealism in her art, a performativity rooted in her carefree pre-war life that even the constraints of her chosen career cannot contain, staging a shoot to make a provocative artistic point beyond any photojournalistic impetus or mandate.

But the film is framed in a curious way that requires some commentary. Spoiler alert forthcoming, in case you are desperate for a plot twist in this otherwise straightforward character drama. The film presents itself as Miller's story as told by Miller herself. Winslet plays an aged Miller at her home in 1977, telling her life story to a meek interviewer, played by Josh O'Connor. By film's end, his hesitant questions and awkward demeanor is revealed to be due to his being her adult son, Antony Penrose, who knew nothing of her life's work. She never discussed her time in the war, no doubt due to the trauma and her subsequent alcoholism. And her pictures were apparently not published during her life, as the British censors decided that photos of the war and concentration camps would only further upset the already traumatized British public. While discussing her experiences and their effect on Miller, they also discuss Antony's difficult and distanced relationship with her. The already thick melodrama reaches its boiling point when, finally, it is revealed that Miller recently passed away, and that Antony is learning all of this from her hidden photographs in the attic as he's cleaning out her house. His interview is only in his head. She's inscrutable as ever -- indeed, we only see her true colors in the film in brief moments when she sympathizes with or protects women, such as fending off a rapist in Paris and comforting his would-be victim -- and her gruff, stoic presence does little to help the film feel like anything more than a History Channel dramatized retelling of someone's life. 

The Beast Within (2024)

Score: 1.5 / 5

I love werewolf movies. My favorite monster can take most any form, and I'll dig it. But The Beast Within, the sophomore feature from Alexander J. Farrell (I've not seen his other work), comes as close as I've ever been to actively disliking a werewolf movie. Its aims, arguably admirable, are to seduce viewers into a horror film that focuses on an isolated rural family -- father, mother, daughter -- and their strange rituals. The daughter, apparently kept out of the nighttime events, becomes curious and learns that their family is subject to a curse whereby dear old daddy must repress a raging beast within his body and spirit. It's contemporary rural Gothic, bleak and gritty, and I was excited to dive in.

Unfortunately, that's where its good ideas dwindle. The actors are all mediocre at best, though the daughter, Willow (Caoilinn Springall), is worth watching. Of course, she's also handicapped by her illness, which requires her to lug around an oxygen tank, which just feels too obvious a trope to be taken seriously these days. And of course it becomes her weapon and tool of liberation eventually, which almost made me turn off the film. Kit Harrington as the titular father/beast Noah often looks bored or confused while attempting to be menacing, and his character is somewhat sexualized, which is simply uncomfortable. He's the one with the disease threatening to rend their family ties, not she. Ashleigh Cummings plays the mother, Imogen, without much inspiration or impression.

Dreamlike editing and cinematography often mobilize a werewolf film, but the quality of this particular picture is so visually dark as to be often inscrutable. Worse, the half-world fantasy elements do not add to the theming or atmosphere (as in something like Pan's Labyrinth or even Antlers, which would be a closer comparison point) but rather obfuscate the plot itself. We're never quite sure what's real, what's a dream, and what a little girl might be interpreting from reality into her cinematic memory. It turns out (SPOILER ALERT, in case you are interested in watching this mess) that daddy Noah is not, in fact, a werewolf, but is merely an abusive alcoholic. His binges and violent outbursts are translated in the film -- facilitated as it is by Willow's perspective -- as his monstrosity (think The Shining). We see her reading Jack London's White Fang, suggesting her choice of literature is shaping her ability to make sense of her own abuse. Worse, there's an outing Imogen and Willow take about halfway through the film that overtly reveals that, metaphoric monstrosity or not, they are both victims of domestic abuse. 

The subjective haze around this otherwise potentially compelling narrative nugget makes it difficult to understand how a screenplay so half-baked could ever get green-lit, and why nobody involved suggested any additional workshops or revisions. An hour in, it's still trying to articulate the filial dynamics that were established in the first ten minutes; by the denouement, it's just beating us over the head with what was an obvious and simplistic resolution. The production design and characterizations make no sense; their rustic life is meant to be modern somehow, and yet for gifts they wrap things in plain brown paper and Willow is thrilled to receive match sticks, while their house boasts and enormous family portrait and a thronelike chair for its patriarch. These disparate elements actively confuse and distract our awareness as the film develops incrementally between nightmare fake-outs. Apart from a few almost-scary moments -- mostly shot in blink-and-you'll-miss-it bursts of shadowy images -- the film adds nothing to the subgenre, and is in fact very pointedly not a creature feature, merely muddying the waters with wasted opportunities and disappointingly trite messaging.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one. If you're hankering for a recent werewolf movie, spend time with The Wolf of Snow Hollow, The Cursed, or this year's brand new Wolf Man, all of which are better viewing experiences in every way.

The Substance (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

Coralie Fargeat returns to the director's seat with another sumptuously realized vision of feminist horror in The Substance. After Revenge (2017) put her in the spotlight with its genre-bending, pulse-pounding thrills and clever spin on the rape-revenge exploitation flick, we were all itching to see what she'd next craft. No one expected this behemoth of a body horror machine, nor a satirical, incisive assault on internalized ageism and sexism in the entertainment industry. This is very much a Major Issues film, no doubt why it has been so lauded by the season's award shows, but it's also the kind of horror film that doesn't usually get such formal recognition.

Fargeat's screenplay and direction are brave and brazen, spinning a yarn of an aging actress trying to stay afloat by leading video exercise classes on daytime television. Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), still gorgeous, seems to be just getting by. Her monstrous boss, a studio executive pointedly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid), cancels her show to find a younger, hotter girl who might boost ratings. Devastated and distracted, Elisabeth survives a violent car wreck; in her despair, she learns of a mysterious product that might help her. It's called The Substance, and it will supposedly rejuvenate her body so that she can continue working in the industry. It rings familiar in our Ozempic era of easy solutions and fast results; the product is shrouded in secrecy and its customer service could be viewed as either the shadiest low-budget street deal imaginable or the sleekest of high-tech alchemy hidden in plain sight. However you view it, you just know it's bad news.

Mythic stories like this rarely traffic in good news, indeed, but Elizabeth's single-minded determination to stay relevant in her youth-obsessed industry pulls her past the ideological red flags posed by The Substance. Like a child in a Grimm fairytale, she claims her first package and immediately dives into the process. By this point in the film, I was riveted. Fargeat presents us with stylized pseudo-reality like we rarely see anymore. Workplace fisheye lenses make us feel observed and paranoid, like Elisabeth, and present Harvey as a grotesque creature, physically repugnant in his bodily functions and avaricious materialism. Her apartment is sparse and spacious, modern but also somewhat liminal, especially her enormous bathroom entirely in white tile, a sort of reverse "sunken place" that feels more clinical and sanitary than any hospital. But there won't be medicine happening in this one. Expressive cinematography, inspired costuming, and compellingly overbearing music (mostly synth) make this film feel more inspired by the giallo tradition than by any contemporary styles.

Leaving the rest of the plot for you to discover on your own, I'll quickly run through my remaining notes. Much like in her first film, Fargeat here takes a perverse pleasure in toying with our expectations; between her many references to other genre staples, she ekes out a familiar story in novel ways. Unlike many horror films, The Substance doesn't encourage ways to outsmart or outmaneuver its central rules; once you activate and start the switch, you're locked in for the week. You can apparently stop at any time (unlike The Ring, which seems an intentional reference), but of course you won't want to once you taste the fountain of youth. Destroying her creation -- a double named Sue (Margaret Qualley) -- isn't really an option for her, so like her literary counterparts Dr. Jekyll, Victor Frankenstein, and Dorian Gray, Elisabeth is tortured by the monster she's created. But is Sue the monster? Fargeat demonstrates that it's not so simple. And visually, she's pulling as much from David Cronenberg (The Brood, The Fly) and Brian De Palma (Carrie) as she is from Re-Animator, Alfred Hitchcock, and '80s workout videos. The film even uses Bernard Herrmann's theme music from Vertigo, which should tell you all you need to know.

Though awards season is over, I'm finally getting through my 2024 watchlist and reviews, and frankly Moore should have won the Oscar for this performance. Not "in honor" of her career, as many have said, but simply for the brutality of her creation in Elisabeth. She's doing physical acting we've never seen from her, to say nothing of the emotional odyssey she mostly nonverbally embarks upon. By the climax, she's doing this Glenn Close-esque chameleonic thing as makeup and prosthetics take over, and I was so riveted that the humor was almost lost on me. Qualley is admirable here, and does exceptional work, but this is Moore's movie through and through, and her unbridled, raw embodiment of Elisabeth is one for the ages. The centerpiece of the film is a protracted scene in which Elisabeth, tired of the chaos and hoping to reclaim her natural, aging identity, primps herself for a date night. I won't say more, but if you know, you know. It might be the best filmed sequence of any film all year.

Without spoiling anything, there are boons for repeat viewings of this film. Quaid's performance is his best in many long years. Thematically, the film grapples with more than any one scene can handle. Visually, it beats you into submission and then pours acid on your wounds. Fargeat seems determined to gross us out, and the John Waters effect is palpable; by the denouement, we finally recognize that camp was her endgame, and it's as emotionally violent as it is absurdly irreverent. Whether you've put it off or even seen it once, it might be time to dim the lights and hit "play." No matter how ready you think you are for it, you're not.

Humane (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I try not to get in the weeds of artists' personal lives, so I was shocked that there's another Cronenberg kid making great movies out there! Caitlin Cronenberg's directorial debut, Humane, released last April and I hadn't even heard about it until the autumn. Perhaps part of the reason for this is that her aesthetic, at least in this film, is pretty far-removed from that of her father and brother. There aren't monstrous transformations happening here, at least not of the bodily kind.

In a story that I'd kill to be able to direct on a stage, Humane takes on major existential issues in what is essentially a single-location dramatic thriller. Its pseudo-sci-fi trappings are revealed immediately: the world's climate and overpopulation crises have resulted in governments mandating voluntary euthanasia. There seem to be reasonable rewards for it, and especially older folks are volunteering in order to a) escape the hellish specter of a hopeless future, b) offer their money and/or property to loved ones in streamlined fashion, and c) avoid the possibility of conscripted euthanasia. 

But we approach this horrifyingly believable plot through the lens of a single family in their home. A former newscaster (Peter Gallagher) and his second wife, a celebrity chef, invite his four adult children to dinner without telling them why: it is to be their final dinner together, as he and his wife have volunteered to die. They seem like a nice older couple, clearly wealthy and successful but kind, yet their children seem to tell a different story, one that suggests the older couple's peace came after an empty nesters' transition period that deeply changed them. The eldest son, Jared (Jay Baruchel), is a chauvinistic asshole a la Tucker Carlson, and the other kids include pharmaceutical CEO Rachel (Emily Hampshire), struggling actress Ashley (Alanna Bale), and recovering addict Noah (Sebastian Chacon). Of them all, Noah seems the most kind-hearted and earnest, but his clearly dark past has turned his siblings against him. When these jerks find out about their father's plan, the dinner quickly spins into emotionally fraught chaos.

If you know me, you know I love a dinner party gone wrong in my fiction. This movie starts there and goes off the rails, not unlike The Invitation (2015) in its embrace of bloody domestic horror. Before the family can even settle their boiling argument, visitors arrive at the door: representatives of the government, commissioned to carry out the euthanasia. Because, of course, the government isn't doing it all themselves. These mercenaries for hire (led by a deliciously wicked Enrico Colantoni) seem professional enough until something goes wrong. Then we learn the truth of their mission. They came to collect two bodies. They will leave with two bodies. After their stepmom changes her mind and flees, it's up to the kids to decide which of them will take her place in a body bag.

I haven't been so shocked and riveted during a film in months. This is fabulously contrived yet raw material, and the actors are firing on all fronts to keep up with the breakneck pace of the screenplay. Thematically not unlike The Fall of the House of Usher or even Succession, the story isn't quite relatable because the characters are all heightened caricatures of various kinds of success and power, ruined by the wealth and fame into which they were born. It's not their fault, the film seems to say, but it is their responsibility to be, well, responsible with the privilege they've been given. Spoiler alert: they aren't.

I'd have liked more style in terms of cinematography and production design, because the film can be a bit bland visually. And some of the characters could be said to be rather flat. But for a quick and nasty little excursion into the dark side of family life teetering on the edge of macro-scale oblivion, Humane is one of the coolest and most interesting stories put to film all year. Upon reflection, I'd argue that even without body horror -- although there is some effective and gory fighting -- the film fits into the Cronenberg oeuvre in its consideration of the cost of abandoning or losing your soul. The kids don't feel like family, so when they've been cast out of their metaphorical ivory tower, they'll fight tooth and nail to survive over each other. This hit especially hard in the moments when the commissioned body collectors, not the kids, reveal their own darker impulses and delight in agony. They've lost themselves, too, and it's a chilling reminder that when the world falls, the wolves will dance on our graves.

Emilia Perez (2024)

Score: 0.5 / 5

Nope.

I won't waste my time or yours talking about this stupid, offensive, incoherent, un-entertaining dumpster fire.

Never watch it. You can thank me later.

The Apprentice (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

With its title and unfortunately timely release, The Apprentice could easily have been a ham-fisted series of cheap shots at Donald Trump, designed to play off fears and fervor of the current political season. That it most certainly is not. However your mileage on its subject varies, and regardless of your mileage on him as a topic in general, the film presents a fascinating character study, insightful and incisive even as it bravely presents the unflattering truth of how the figurehead we hear and see came to be as he is. Now, it's a biopic, and that of a still-living person, so "truth" here is up for debate. After all, because of the culture around this man deciding to forsake things that are, in fact, true, it's ironic that his supporters are seeming to take issue with this film. But dramatizations are so rarely built around documented facts (they leave those to the documentaries to play around with) and rather built around fascinating characters doing silly or scary things. That's what makes it drama! Some might raise umbrage with a particular scene or two -- and if you've seen it, you know exactly which I'm talking about -- and while that may be a fair criticism, just try to tell me those scenes aren't the most gobsmacking in the film.

Writer Gabriel Sherman and director Ali Abassi present us with a view of the current rogue president and would-be autocrat while he's still learning how to be awful. The first half of the story takes place in the '70s, as a young Trump learns his infamous "art of the deal" while being effectively groomed by the patently evil urban lawyer Roy Cohn. The mentee is in awe of the brazen power wielded by Cohn's controversial braggadocio, lapping up every bit of chauvinistic cruelty he can at the hands of the master of self-delusion and internalized hatred. It's a riveting hour or so of potent ideas and a reminder of the man Trump once was, artificially building his career while bankrolled by his family and still sometimes trying to be charming. What else might account for Trump following Cohn (of all people) into the bathroom to butter him up and convince him to help him get that damned 42nd Street hotel built?

Sherman, ever the journalist, works hard to inject the proceedings with as many factual references as possible, though it does occasionally feel like a series of Easter eggs dropped for the history buffs among us. The approach carries a certain charm, especially for those of us who never gave a shit about "The Apprentice" and his grotesque business enterprises, because it provides cultural context in spades. The film's production design is almost gilded itself, but despite the tacky trappings around each character, Abbassi and team visually highlight the underbelly of rot beneath garish excess. 

Sebastian Stan plays the titular man with a reserved, even earnest, demeanor instantly recognizable to anyone who has been so insecure as to desperately fashion a new public persona to achieve some level of success. It's a risky move, especially for the protagonist of a modern biopic, yet even Trump's withdrawal often reads as overacting; this makes Stan's performance all the more riveting, as we track his avaricious pursuit of wealth and influence from seedy criminals to government officials. He's never wholly knowable, despite the film being about him, and while some may decry that as a failure of The Apprentice -- what is a biopic if not meant to lay bare its subject's internal life? -- I'd argue that this particular subject has no internal life, having sacrificed it in his Faustian bargain for fame and power.

And who is his Mephistopheles? None other than Cohn, played in a masterful, award-worthy performance by Jeremy Strong. Cohn, still riding his own infamy after the Rosenberg trial, is the amoral demon of recent American history, brought to life by a screenplay and actor who are determined to showcase the man in much more putrid light than even Tony Kushner managed in Angels in America. Small and sweaty, impeccably dressed, and aggressively bullying everyone around him, Cohn stalks around like a man eager to fight with anything but his fists. Even with his homosexual partner trailing behind him (and having a gay orgy stumbled upon by his protégé!), he has so effectively fictionalized his own identity that we immediately see the traits of Trump in this self-hating, relentlessly cruel pathological liar. It's even through Cohn that we first hear the shockingly evil rules of life and business that Trump lives by, rules he would eventually pass off as his own in his own The Art of the Deal. As a man eventually forced, in the film's second half, to reckon with the monster he is and the monster he created, Strong's performance is one for the ages.

These leading men are surrounded by a wonderful cast, though the other players aren't given much chance to do anything independent. And that's okay; the film works better through its limited focus. It's not a documentary, after all! Maria Bakalova notably shines in her handful of scenes as Ivana, cleverly undermining the image of a trophy wife so often associated with her in the '80s. Speaking of which, the second half of the film does indeed jump ahead in time to that decade, as Trump's marriage collapses, Cohn's health deteriorates, and the American climate burns with Reaganomics and capitalistic decadence. While the jump is more than a bit jarring, and doesn't fully make sense as a storytelling technique if the point is to better understand Trump's formative years, one might make the case that it's the natural conclusion for this particular story. Regardless, this is when the actors really showcase their talents beyond how they interpret a screenplay. Playing characters that change so dramatically in such a comparatively short time requires a lot of hard work from performers, and this cast nails it.

As a historical document, The Apprentice will leave you wanting more. But as a depiction of Trump, Cohn, and their roles in each other's life, it's a mercurial character drama that plays like an entertaining thriller. As such, its climactic scene, depicting Trump violently raping his wife, feels like torment that we both need and deserve to see; it can be easy to write off his cruelties as symptomatic of selling out to capitalism or amoral American "values," but to do so will leave viewers without reminders of why the man is so personally, deeply hateful. Though it's hard to watch, I'm glad the filmmakers included the scene, so that we can all remember that, regardless of his policies or politics in general, Trump is a sexual predator and is in fact guilty of violent crimes against women. Beyond that, I'm also glad the film treats Trump like a real human -- much as his depiction in The Comey Rule (2020) -- and not as any kind of caricature or parody, despite the constant SNL-like references to his external life littering the screenplay. Painting his life thus, as something more thrilling or horrific than melodramatic or soapy, is a dark reminder that the worst is indeed yet to come.