It Comes At Night review

Trey Edward Shults’ meditation on paranoia “It Comes at Night” is a creeping thriller, about a family held together by fear.  Many filmmakers and storytellers have mined numerous post-apocalyptic scenarios to further explore the darkest corners of the human experience, and in that regard this picture prides itself in starring deeply into the abyss without blinking.

The film centers on a small family played by Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo as the parents Paul and Sarah and Kelvin Harrison Jr. as their 17 year old son Travis. Only a few days after having to quarantine Sarah’s elderly father from the house,  later killing him and burning his body in the backwoods to insure that the deadly disease he contracted can’t be further spread, a stranger from a few miles away named Will (Christopher Abbott) begs the family for food and refuge for himself and wife and toddler. After arguing with his hopeful wife and sternly vetting the newcomer, Paul decides to aid in this rescue effort. Will and his young wife Kim (Riley Keough) are grateful for the food and sanctuary but the specter of tribalism and tragedy looms large over this stressful new dynamic.

Shults does a good job at establishing the emotional stakes of this story early on so that when even the smallest disturbances are breached, we are made as hyper cautious as our worried protagonists. Like John Carpenter’s 1982 meditation on paranoia “The Thing,” this film puts the characters in a position where common decency is not the rational choice in close quarters. The overarching themes about stubborn masculinity and loss of humanity in the face of panic are not new to this socially conscious sci-fi sub-genre, but it’s the directorial precision and complicated performances that set this film apart from the mountains of forgettable virus/zombie movies that precede it.

Some have complained that the film’s marketing campaign by distributor A24 has been misleading. The titl, as well as the jumpy trailer that focuses more on the viscera and eerie imagery  than it does the movie’s core family drama, have lead some disappointed viewers to believe that this was supposed to be more conventional horror film. While this experience is thoroughly entrenched in bleak tragedy and the implications of the plot are fairly horrific, the movie doesn’t ramp up every scene towards a jump scare and there aren’t any monsters or cannibals scratching on the outside doors of the protagonists secluded home. What that said, there is a strange omniscient point of view that hangs over the drama as it unfolds and it sometimes feels like a demonic hex that’s been put upon this sensitive circumstance.

“It Comes at Night” may not be the traditional horror programmer that people thought they were getting but it is a very dark film that’s meant to challenge our views on human empathy and familial loyalties. Cinematographer Drew Daniels uses minimal lighting schemes to sculpt his subjects out of ink-black darkness, and his slow push-ins on red doors and elongated hallways recalls the nightmarish imagination of David Lynch and monumental intimidation of Stanley Kubrick.  I can’t say that the sci-fi subject matter presented here is all together new or innovative and as a thriller the movie’s reveals are somewhat predicted, but the filmic craft exemplified and the actor’s dedication to their character’s emotional motivations elevate the stock premise into being a taught exercise in suspicion.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jun-2017 

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "It Comes At Night." 

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie review

Children’s entertainment is often overlooked for its significant in the development of our creative minds. Kid’s media is what ultimately teaches us how to absorb information as adults. When it comes to film, kid-vid teaches us about genre, comedic /dramatic editing choices, as well as important cultural reference points. Children’s literature is equally significant in our developing minds, so when films are adapted from our grade schools’ book-fair catalog it’s worth noting how the translation from one media to another informs how the property is now being marketed to a newer generation. In the case of “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” we can see a direct influence from the source material mixed in with the modern comedic sensibilities of the voice talent and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller (“Get Him to The Greek," “The Muppets”).

Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch voice George and Harold, two grade-school pranksters who spend more time in school hatching plans to humiliate their grumpy Principle Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) than they do studying. After school, they hang out in their tricked out tree-house drawing comic book adventures of their superhero creation Captain Underpants. Later, when a prank goes wrong with a cereal-box hypno-ring, Principle Krupp is put into a deep trance where he then behaves as their beloved hero. This is all fun and games for the duo until a real-life mad scientist super-villain named Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll) is hired to teach at the school, where he plans to implement his devious schemes. It is then up to Harold and George to convince their dazed and deluded Captain Underpants to save the day.

Obviously, all of this is very silly and the movie revels in the source’s juvenile sensibilities. Stoller and company might have internalized the text as a celebration of the class-clown. In this world, science is boring, nerds and teachers and humorless and school assignments get in the way of creativity.  At one point we see that Krupp has even cancelled the school’s arts programs. For me there’s mixed messaging here, both emphasizing the importance of imagination and self-assurance and celebrating crass anti-intellectualism. The worlds of the creative arts and the worlds of academics don’t have to be mutual exclusive, but “Captain Underpants” curiously pits them against one another.

If I’m not analyzing the content as closely, as an animated comedy, the movie’s funny enough. Jokes about underpants, poopy pants and farting orchestras don’t really resonate so much with me anymore, but Stoller peppers the dialogue with occasional clever references and humorous turns of phrase, and the film contains a live-action sock-puppet aside that makes you wish the whole movie had committed to its low-tech charm.

“Captain Underpants” skews fairly young and a lot of its base humor left me cold, but there’s an appeal and whimsy about the world created here that makes it difficult not to fall in line with the movie’s mischievous irreverence.  The voice-actors bring allot specificity to their characters and the textured and stylized animation is easy enough on the eyes to allow for quick cuts, jumpy asides and rapid zooms. I can’t say that this will be a family movie standard in the coming years, but I can that it made me laugh and held my attention better than most films intended for the same audience.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jun-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie."

Wonder Woman review

Both critics and geeks have been justifiably nervous that the first female-fronted superhero film of our modern-day fanboy renaissance is being brought to us by Zach Snyder and Warner Bros’ DC Comics cinematic universe; the same universe that’s brought such us large-scale disappointments as “Man of Steel,” as well as last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad.” For many years, Marvel producer Kevin Feige was curiously noncommittal about the possibility of funding a female-driven entry into his web of interconnected action films, but in a rush to catch up with the successful Disney entity, Warners has released a “Wonder Woman” film that breaks the tradition of  their current output by being surprisingly good.

We were first introduced to Gal Gadot’s sword and shield wielding Amazonian as a peripheral character in “Batman v Superman,” but here director Patty Jenkins and screenwriter Allen Heinberg focuses in on her origin and gives us the emotional and philosophic context we need to truly care about the admittedly cheesy character. This time we meet Princess Diana as a trained warrior of the all-female demigod tribe created by Zeus to protect the human race. After the tribe has spent years hiding and training in their magically hidden island of Themyscira, awaiting for the day the Greek god Aries returns to finish them off, Diana discovers a human WWI spy named Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) who crash lands in their ocean. When he tells her of the devastations and atrocities he’s fighting in his home-world, Diana travels back with him to find and kill a German military leader named Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), who she suspects is a disguised Aires orchestrating the stage for human destruction.

Jenkins, who was previously attached to direct Marvel’s “Thor: The Dark World” before leaving the project over disagreements with the studio, has a firm hand on the pulpy tone of the source material. The first third of the film plays like a large-scale episode of “Zena: Warrior Princess” while the rest resembles the popcorn-flavored fantasy of adventure flicks like “Raiders of the Lost Arc” and “The Rocketeer.” These worlds are joined more seamlessly than one might think and the Jenkins’ focus on Diana/Wonder Woman as a sturdy center of consciousness allows us to accept and even admire her idealistic world-view when it comes to altruistic justice.

Gadot and Pine also bring a lot of life and pathos to their characters and unlike the DC’s recent cinematic output, this film allows for scenes to breathe and build to moments of action and suspense instead of always rushing to the next big set-piece. Much like Kenneth Branagh’s first “Thor” movie, “Wonder Woman” also includes fish-out-of-water humor as the warrior princess tries to wrap her head around the peculiarities of turn of the century Europe. 

Given that so much of this movie is entertaining and easy to invest in, it’s unfortunate that Patty Jenkins attended Zach Snyder‘s school of hyper-stylized action direction.  The battle sequences are filmed using his signature slow-mo-speed-up technique, occasionally pausing the action to frame corny, self-satisfied, music-video glory shots. The final battle between Wonder Woman and Aries separates Diana from the emotionally-driven war sequences, only so that the film can pay off the genre fans with an overpowered comic-book boss-battle, wherein the foes are shooting lightning out of their hands and trucks and building are flung back and forth. With that noted, it’s a common mistake for these kinds of movies to over-climax and I can’t fault Jenkins, who’s never directed a film on this budget, for sliding into an easy aesthetic trope.

“Wonder Woman” knows what works in the superhero origin drama and it plays its cards carefully. Unlike the previous entries in the misbegotten DCU, it doesn’t try to cram in loads of exposition and tangential DC Comics world-building for the sole purpose of setting up future sequels, remembering to succeed on its own as a standalone adventure. Many will write about the gender politics of the film and it is significant that this movie exists as it does for young girls to root for a hero of their own, though Pine and Gadot’s awkwardly suggestive banter sometimes undercuts the strong feminist themes. The film is a hair too long and slips into headache-inducing destruction by its end, but too much of it works too well for me to criticize the picture for simply leaning into familiar genre tropes.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jun-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Wonder Woman."