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." 

Nocturnal Animals review

With his second feature “Nocturnal Animals, fashion designer Tom Ford tackles the very things that inspires great art and how the different people in our lives leave impressions that help form our creative responses. This is a lofty theme and with his adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel “Tony and Susan” Ford compares and contrasts two different genres and two different styles of visual filmmaking to comment on the formation the art and storytelling itself.

Amy Adams plays Susan Marrow, an icy and disconnected art curator who’s married to a traveling trophy husband named Hutton (Armie Hammer).  While Hutton is away on a clumsily obvious secret trip with his mistress, Susan receives a manuscript for a novel written by her ex-husband Tony Hastings (Jake Gyllenhaal). The book comes with a note about how the how the story was inspired by their turbulent history. The film then visualizes the contents of Tony’s book, in where Gyllenhaal also plays the main character of Tony’s Novel Edward Scheffeild. Edward is an easily frightened man who loses his wife and daughter to a gang of drunk rednecks after being forced off a West-Texas road after a car chase in the middle of the night. He seeks to punish these men with a rogue desert detective named Bobby Andels (Michael Shannon), a man of few words who no longer fears losing his job or his life to do the right thing.

 The film opens on an audience-testing slow-motion sequence where morbidly obese elderly women are shown dancing seductively to the movie’s melodramatic stringed score. This title sequence lingers on close-ups of sagging body parts before revealing these women are part of art exhibition curated by Adam’s dispossessed character. The mix between the grotesque the gorgeous permeates Ford’s every narrative and aesthetic choice here. The framing device about Susan rediscovering her young and complicated passion with the struggling writer of her post-college years is couched in the story to represent the ‘real-world.’ Yet the painfully stilted dialogue, the intentionally cold and bloodless performances within these scenes and the careful framing of Ford’s modern-art Los Angeles set-design presents a less relatable world than what is represented in the scenes depicting Tony’s pulpy and hyper-violent western/thriller manuscript.

With this strange juxtaposition, Ford tries to make the argument that success and wealth stifles creative expression by cutting the artists away from humanity, and in doing so, he proves his own point by constructing a film that is stifled by battling creative agendas. The two stories are supposed to be symbiotic and analogous but the movie lacks the necessary connective tissue to develop either story past their highly-stylized surfaces. Though pulpy and overly-treaded genre territory, the Coen Brothers-esq manuscript segments are far more engaging and impactful than the sterile soap-opera framing plot, which resembles the high-art sleaze of the 60s and 70s Italian filmmakers, as filtered through the steely cynicism of “Dead Ringers” era David Cronenberg. The two styles constantly trip over each other as the film cuts between them and their intended symbolic relationship reveals a disappointingly shallow connection.

“Nocturnal Animals” is filled with a lot of style and the structure of the story attacks character-motivations and themes in a challenging and indirect way. This is a laudable storytelling approach, but it fails to meet those challenges in a way that doesn’t seem overly self-conscious and ill-considered by the director. Gyllenhaal gives two great performances and Michael Shannon does what he’s made a career of doing and gives the best performance in a problematic movie.  Adams is almost denied an emotional reality so that she can act as a vessel by which the movie’s (unintentional?) misogyny is accounted for.  What makes the film all the more frustrating is that its ambitions are the cause of its own failure.

Grade: C

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2016

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

Don't Breathe review

“Don’t Breathe” is exactly the kick in the neck that extreme horror needs right now. Fede Alvarez’s new thriller cleverly plays with expectations and tropes within the home-invader genre but it never loses sight of its own momentum, creating a vivid cinematic world of its own within a deliberately designed, claustrophobic setting.  The movie makes a lot of allusions to classic shockers of the past, such as Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” and Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs,” as well as scene elements and direct imagery from “Silence of the Lambs,” and “Cujo.” Conceptually, this film is basically a reverse version of the 1967 Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin thriller “Wait Until Dark.” But even as those obvious sign posts are visible for the cinefiles in the audience “Don’t Breathe” slams around with enough of its own moves and creative WTF moments to justify its many obvious appropriations.

The story’s set-up is pretty simple; three up-to-no-good, Detroit 20-somethings stake out the home of a blind ex-military man (Stephen Lang) who’s sitting on 300,000 dollars of settlement money after losing his only daughter in a car accident. Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette) and their gun-toting gangster-wannabe frenemy Money (Daniel Zovatto) all hope to use this small fortune to give up their criminal lives and move out west to California, where they can escape their family problems and the general angst of Midwestern, industrial poverty.  Of course, once they break into the house of their mark things don’t go as they had planned.  As it turns out, the blind veteran and his vicious Rottweiler are much more prepared for the occasion than our delinquent protagonists had originally anticipated.

Those with a weak stomach and mild psychological constitution should be warned that this movie serves a pretty strong cup of coffee. Alvarez knows how to wait the appropriate time to strike and he patiently earns his gore, but when the rubber hits the road he doesn’t hold back when it comes to his depictions of blunt violence and seat-squirming shock sequences. In fact, half of the picture’s strength comes from its build up and anticipation towards these moments. This director also never forgets how to structure a scene and uses his wandering camera to layout the architecture of each set-piece so the audience can get a true sense of where everyone is and how hard or easy it should be for them to escape. The best cat and mouse films know that good chase scenes are most effective when they fully incorporate their setting, and in that sense, Lang’s creaky, three-level home becomes another character in the film.

As the movie’s introduces its principle players the dialogue can be stiff and some of the characterizations are at times too broad and archetypal but the actors usually are able pick up the screenplay’s slack in those departments. Things get significantly better once we get into the meat of the break-in. Alvarez revels in the mechanics of his suspense and the cinematic elements of horror as pop entertainment. He loves to pull the strings tight on his scenes and loves to pull the rug out from under the audience, and though the film’s use of sound is especially important here—given that the antagonist is blind—the movie never defaults to the overuse of cheap, quiet-quiet-loud jack in the box scares.

After a summer of misfiring popcorn fare, “Don’t Breathe” is the perfect mean-spirited antidote to start the fall season. It’s unpretentious and unencumbered, and more importantly, it understands the appeal of the genre it’s playing in and knows how to confidently execute it with practical style and craftsmanship.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal-Sep/2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Don't Breathe."

Nightcrawler review

In the wake of the media blitz surrounding the recent Ebola scares and the minute-by-minute news coverage devoted to the few cases brought over to America by health officials working in the highly affected regions of Africa, Dan Gilroy’s sleazy suspense film “Nightcrawler,” which skewers media outlets who profit on paranoia, would seem hilariously timely and ironic if it weren’t so real and unsettling.  The now-viral video segment in which Fox News’ Shepard Smith broke the journalistic fourth wall and stepped away from his network’s regular programming to reassure fear-gripped Americans that they’re okay and that the reality of the situation isn’t necessarily as bad as the news might have us believe, suggested, at least for a brief moment, a tipping point in which basic human morals outweighed the media’s weekly bottom-line.  

Though set in the microcosm of local LA reporting, “Nightcrawler,” without apology, thoroughly skewers the world of cutthroat exploitation journalism by framing its argument around tangential concerns of economic desperation and the rise of internet self-help woo-woo, wrapped in a stingy self-reflexive jab at Hollywood’s tendency to alter reality in favor of the glamour and grime of ‘reality-ness .’ In short, this is probably the smartest and most immersive thriller likely to be seen this year, despite having been released on a minimally-attended Halloween weekend.

As the uncomfortably desperate people-pleaser Louis Bloom, Jake Gyllenhaal drops a third of his usual body-mass to play the type of character we’re usually used to seeing him hunt down as a cop in films like “Zodiac” or last year’s “Prisoners.”  We follow closely as he steals, lies and manipulates his way through Los Angeles looking for low-level work, until he finally finds the job of a lifetime when he pulls over on the side of the road to investigate a car-crash and discovers a freelance video operation headed by a mustachioed Bill Paxton who’s there to capture and sell grisly footage of crime and destruction for the local nightly news. With a small amount of dishonestly earned startup capital, Bloom buys himself a digital camera and hires a criminally underpaid ‘intern’ named Rick (Riz Ahmed) and together they comb the city’s suburbs looking for valuable blood and mayhem.

Rene Russo, who, along with Gyllenhaal is nomination worthy here, plays the producer of a fledgling LA news station who strikes an exclusive deal with Bloom, so long as he keeps bringing in the gory goods, which of course only enables his troubled psychosis. Given the parable-like meta-metaphor going on here, it’s not a stretch to assume that she stands in for the sensational media as a whole; the local news, the global news, the 24 hour cable news, Hollywood, the tabloids, reality TV, and the rest of the morally neutral enterprises that bank on perpetuating negativity.  

Somewhere between the fast-talking, self-centered ice of “American Psycho’s” Patrick Bateman and Robert De Niro’s portrayal of the comically pathetic Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s cult masterpiece “The King of Comedy,” what makes Bloom such a fascinating and terrifying character to watch is that he’s too good at his job. While we can’t believe the depraved lengths he’s willing to go to get to the scene of the crime before his competition or the lines he’s willing cross to get the perfect shots of carnage he needs, in today’s economic circumstances, we somewhat admire his tenacity and his keen ability to rig the system, given his ability to completely disconnect from humanity.  

With Gilroy’s patient and subtly stylish direction, at times recalling the William Friedkin’s street-movies “Cruising” and “The French Connection,” we’re lulled by the darkly romantic atmosphere of the film into rooting for the character’s success, which later slaps us with our own moral convictions and creates an uneasy tension in our bellies. It’s this kind of blackly humorous, subversive cynicism that will both turn off the portion of the audience who like their movies to leave them feeling good and tickle those who appreciate razor-sharp and perversely misanthropic satire.

Grade: A

Originally published by the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

The Drop review

                Though displaying nothing new or especially unique, Michael Roskam’s street-crime potboiler “The Drop” is a totally well-oiled entertainment mechanism that uses its deliberate run-time to reinforce story and shape character relationships in a way that’s refreshingly confident.  In an early-fall season that's excruciatingly barren of acceptable mainstream releases, the fact that I can muster-up a bar-level positive review for this flick feels like a heavy-load lifted from my shoulders, but, with that said, I don’t want to undersell just how exciting and occasionally inspired this little bit of gangster-grit can be.  Roskam’s command of performances and ability to properly stimulate story beats shouldn’t to be overlooked just because so much of what we see here is so familiar, and the way the plot, little by little, pieces itself together, reversing our assumptions about the characters and the meaning of their interactions, is certainly worthy of more than consolation praise.  

                Tom Hardy and the late James Gandolfini star as Bob and Marv, two cousins who run a Brooklyn dive-bar that’s used by the Czech mafia as a front illegal transactions and occasional money drops.  Older cousin Marv, who used to own the bar officially, is bitter about his property becoming a babysitting gig for a dangerous outside force. Younger cousin Bob is trying to live his complicated life one day at a time when he finds an abused puppy outside of the house of a formerly abused girl named Nadia (Noomi Repace), leading the two strangers to nurse the animal back to health, splitting visitation days between their increasingly romantic outings. All seems well until Bob and Marv are robbed by petty thieves, prompting upper management to put the pressure on, and a sleazy ex-boyfriend of Nadia claims ownership of the battered puppy/girl, putting pressure on Bob to go into hoodlum white-knight mode. 

                The subtle brilliance of this two pronged plot structure is the way screenwriter Denis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island) ties the strands together in believably incidental ways.  The movie examines the meaning of relationships and the role each participant plays in keeping familial loyalty a priority, then questions just how thin and fragile the membrane between allegiance and betrayal really is. Hardy and Gandolfini are truly exceptional here as the tense arc of their partnership plays out like a back-alley Greek tragedy. Gandolfini especially—in what was probably his last gig before dying of a heart-attack—carries the weight of entire world in his face, and even when his character acts out in a seemingly cold-hearted fashion, the guilt and confliction in his mannerisms offsets the genre clichés within the scenes they occupy. Repace, on the other hand, isn’t terrible but she struggles to deliver her dialogue in a comfortable regional accent, often warbling back into her Swedish inflection. Unfortunately, though never threatening the movie's overall quality, her performance is dwarfed in the many scenes she shares with both Tom Hardy and Matthias Schoenaerts, who plays her pathetic earwig of an ex.

                “The Drop” takes its time building up and laying the path for a conclusion that really informs the rest of the film; not a twist per-se, but a crescendo that links the units together under a unifying thematic purpose. Because of this, the majority of the film feels a little disconnected, casual and sometimes aloof, but once you get to the point where you can see the culmination of events, the film's pays off is emotionally satisfying. In all, though the movie is generically easy to categorize, it’s the quality of direction, the clever scripting, and the power of the performances that stick with you.

Grade: B

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2014

The Purge: Anarchy review

               It’s difficult to enjoy a genre movie about government-sanctioned annual murder sprees when every three weeks or so our news is treated to another mass shooting or a real-life tragedy, but horror films and thrillers have occasionally been able to make poetic sense from of a senseless time.  In this regard, writer/director James DeMonaco’s  “The Purge: Anarchy”  at least tries to contextualize his brand of schlock alongside easy metaphors and well-worn, occupy-era allegory.

                While last summer’s surprise horror-hit “The Purge” only hinted at its dystopian sci-fi conceits, settling closer within the intimate, home-invader sub-genre, this sequel opens up DeMonaco’s futuristic setting. Rather than being locked into one location, we travel through the murderous streets, following a handful of frightened survivors as they look for temporary refuge from the bloody holiday. Pair number one consists of an inner-city mother and teenage daughter (Eva Sanchez and Zoe Soul) whose apartment door is kicked in by their sexually frustrated slumlord. After barely escaping his attack, they run into pair number two, a young disgruntled couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) whose car dies in the wrong side of town just before a city-wide alarm sets off the lawless free-for-all. The only thing keeping these four alive is a stoic police Sergeant (Frank Grillo) who’s on a path of vengeance, as he stalks the roads in his armored car.

                It’s clear that DeMonaco grew up on movies like John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” and Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” and tries to bring the same sense of unflinching bleakness alongside a broad satire of our current social landscape. But like other throwbacky horror directors such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, DeMonaco’s films live and die within the borders of their pastiche. As a fan, he can come up with an exploitation premise that sounds great as a one paragraph synopsis on the back of a DVD. As a director, he seems to struggle when it comes to telling an engaging story with characters you might care about.

                Neither Purge is particular memorable or entertaining, given their anarchic concepts, and unlike the Carpenter film’s they endlessly reference, their dower tone makes it uncomfortable to revel in the mindless popcorn violence. Likewise, the ripped-from-the-headlines soapboxing about class wars and wealth disparity lacks the depth or insight for the film to really work as a think-piece. Instead, we are treated to a competent TV-level cast wandering around an aimless plot as they jump from one scenario to another—some of which are mildly rousing, most of which are poorly staged and severely devoid of the necessary filmic discipline to garner adequate thrills.

                At best, “The Purge:  Anarchy” is a fanboy wish fulfillment that will make you nostalgic for Regan-era paranoia, at worst, it’s a philosophically muddy piece of trash-cinema that juxtaposes awkwardly and flippantly against the kinds of real-world terror and random acts of violence reported nightly on CNN. Perhaps only time and distance can illuminate the appropriate perspective to really understand what these movies are trying to say and what they might be doing effectively. Regardless, in a contextual vacuum, they tease more than they satisfy.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2014