Orphan: First Kill (2022)

August 19, 2022Posted in2022, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Streaming, Thriller

Orphanfirstkill

*½/****
starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Rossif Sutherland, Hiro Kanagawa, Julia Stiles
screenplay by David Coggeshall
directed by William Brent Bell

by Angelo Muredda “Esther’s terrifying saga continues,” promises the confusing promotional copy for William Brent Bell’s Orphan: First Kill, a listless prequel to Jaume Collet-Serra’s impressively nasty thriller Orphan. It says something about the project’s existential inertia that even the pitch is muddled about whether the film’s diminutive protagonist, played again with an appropriate mix of madame prudishness and girlish optimism by Isabelle Fuhrman, is coming or going. Arriving a whole 13-year-old’s lifespan after the original, which famously culminated in the reveal that Esther was not a helpless urchin from St. Mariana’s Home for Girls but a short, thirty-something serial killer from Estonia, Orphan: First Kill dilutes rather than develops the deliberately thin mythos of its predecessor, stretching its punchy 30-second exposition dump about her past into 100 minutes of deadweight.

Bullet Train (2022)

August 5, 2022Posted in2022, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Japan, Martial Arts, Theatrical, Thriller

Bullet Train

*/****
starring Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sandra Bullock
screenplay by Zak Olkewicz, based on the book by Kôtarô Isaka
directed by David Leitch

by Walter Chaw I have so many thoughts about David Leitch’s Bullet Train, and I don’t think a single one of them coheres with any of the other ones. This is most likely a product of general exhaustion, or a lifetime misspent on excess consumption of media colliding now in middle-age with my becoming somehow the go-to for Amer-Asian-splaining of representational issues in American cinema. Like the whole “whitewashing” thing going on around Bullet Train, which is based on a popular Japanese novel by Kôtarô Isaka, who is pleased people like Brad Pitt and Brian Tyree Henry are in this big-budget Hollywood adaptation because it raises his profile internationally. Sony Pictures, whose parent company is Japanese, has already come out saying the same stupid shit about how much they wanted to honour the Japanese source material by hiring the best actors for the project–who happen to be Not Japanese–while Asian-Americans are rightfully outraged about the same stupid shit because of how much damage this ingrained corporate “wisdom” continues to wreak on the Asian-American community. If we continue to pull on this thread, we find Isaka has stolen the entire premise and execution of his book from Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, who, as we know, have stolen their things from British New Wave gangster flicks on the one hand, Asian cinema on the other–Asian cinema that has its roots in, what, Kurosawa? Whose favourite filmmaker was John Ford? And who was ripped off by Italian guy Sergio Leone, who was ripped off by Sam Peckinpah, who was ripped off by Hong Kong legend John Woo, who was ripped off by everybody for a while there. There’s a scene in Bullet Train where Brad Pitt and Brian Tyree Henry, both playing hitmen, fight each other in tight quarters that is awfully reminiscent of Jackie Chan. Another scene recalls Louis Leterrier, who probably learned it from Jet Li–and neither Chan nor Li is Japanese, of course.

Prey (2022)

August 4, 2022Posted in****/****, 2022, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, Streaming, Thriller

Prey

****/****
starring Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp
screenplay by Patrick Aison
directed by Dan Trachtenberg

by Walter Chaw There is a complete lack of pretense to Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey–lack of pretense being one of the emerging traits of a filmmaker whose two films so far (both stealth sequels, both tremendously ethical towards their source materials) are lean genre exercises that feel like minor miracles in a landscape studded with sodden, high-profile disasters. Neither a puzzlebox nor a legacy sequel requiring a spreadsheet and an encyclopedic knowledge of a quarter-century of lore, Prey tells a particular, standalone story in an economical way. It’s a coming-of-age period piece with shades of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto; what I’m saying is it means business. Set in the Northern Great Plains in 1719, it follows a spirited young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), as she tries to prove herself as a hunter under the shadow of her brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers), a gifted bowman and all-around badass who has a stranglehold on the admiration of their tribe. When she follows an all-male hunting party in search of the mountain lion that has attacked one of their people, one of the young men asks her why she’s bothered, given that they don’t need a cook out there in the wilderness. But she sees things they miss in their arrogance and desire to impress one another. Like the skinned rattlesnake left by a path, or the footprint bigger than anything that should be in this place. The boys discount the latter as nothing to worry about, lest they be seen as cautious and thoughtful–as feminine, like Naru.

SlipStreams Vol. 8

July 27, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of July 29, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKPatterns (1956, d. Fielder Cook (U.S.: Paramount+, Epix, Roku, Hoopla, Kanopy, DirecTV, Fandor, Pure Flix; Canada: Hoopla, Fandor))Sixty-six years on, the Rod Serling-scripted Patterns remains the sharpest autopsy of corporate mind-think and groupspeak ever created. In it, a ruthless executive (Everett Sloane) seeks to pass over a loyal and decent career employee (Ed Begley) for a hotshot up-and-comer (Van Heflin) just recruited from another company. The executive is not, however, willing to be forthright in his intentions and so conspires to…

SlipStreams Vol. 7

July 22, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Three random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of July 22, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKThe Way of the Gun (2000, d. Christopher McQuarrie (U.S.: Roku, Vudu, Tubi, Kanopy, Redbox, Pluto TV, Plex; Canada: Tubi, Plex))I didn't catch up with this until recently, after James Caan passed away. The directorial debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, best known these days as the architect of the Mission: Impossible franchise from Rogue Nation on, The Way of the Gun is a bracingly vulgar film about two off-the-grid crooks (Ryan Philippe and Benicio Del Toro) who kidnap the…

Nope (2022)

July 21, 2022Posted in2022, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

Nope

**/****
starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott
written and directed by Jordan Peele

by Walter Chaw I don’t think you ever see the heroes getting hurt, but they limp around a lot, and I couldn’t stop wondering why. Just because it’s more dramatic to be out of breath and limpy? There’s a rule about not looking something in the eye, but I don’t know how the horses can obey it, or if horses look up and behind them when they run. I’ve never seen them do that, in any case. If there’s a rule about eyes, is the plan, in the end, to put eyes on the hood of that hoodie, and if it isn’t, why did he? I understand there’s a point being made here about how Hollywood doesn’t care about the people who work in it–especially minorities and child actors–once their usefulness has been used up, yet I worry if by equating their trauma with a television chimp who goes insane and starts eating faces that the analogy, assuming there is one, has gotten as out of control as the chimp. There’s a reveal that’s less a reveal of an important plot point than a reveal that the reveal of an important plot point was left out somewhere. There’s a powerful opening scene where something happens involving a nickel that is very effective up until the moment it’s explained, at which point it no longer makes sense; why did it do what it did and not what it does for the rest of the film? Is it attracted to movement? Noise? It seems like both–but if so, how are folks constantly escaping it by moving around and making noise? That picture she takes? It looks ridiculous and will be convincing to no one. Wouldn’t the camera and the film the famous cinematographer is shooting still be in one piece, like a black box, when the thing happens with the balloon? How is that the first balloon it’s ever seen or eaten? If I ate a balloon (and could, for instance, withstand multiple gravities of speed and possibly interstellar travel), would I explode?

SlipStreams Vol. 6

July 13, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of July 15, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKSamurai Marathon (2019, d. Bernard Rose (U.S.: Hoopla, Tubi, Pluto TV, Hi-Yah!; Canada: Hoopla, Tubi))Retaining most of the same production team from Takashi Miike's propulsive 13 Assassins, ace producer Jeremy Thomas decided to go with a foreign director for his next jidaigeki and chose, of all people, iconoclastic Bernard Rose. Best known for the original Candyman, Rose is a man of refined tastes, having directed a series of Tolstoy adaptations and engaged in an ongoing project covering the lives of great…

12 Monkeys (1995) – Blu-ray Disc|4K Ultra HD

July 12, 2022Posted in1990s, 2019, 2022, 4K Ultra HD, Arrow Video, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

Vlcsnap-2019-02-17-13h04m23s918Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

Twelve Monkeys
***½/****
BD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
4K – Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by David Webb Peoples & Janet Peoples, inspired by the film La Jetée written by Chris Marker
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Bryant Frazer Twelve Monkeys is a movie about a moment. Yes, sure, it’s a decades-spanning science-fiction tale about time travel, the illusion of free will, and a romance at the end of the world. Yet its defining facet is its repeated, soulful depiction of a few terrible minutes in the life of a young boy who witnesses an event that’s tragic in ways he can’t comprehend. That’s how the story starts and how it ends, the first thing we see and also the last–a child’s eyes, open wide, as he is exposed to the spectacle of death, probably for the first time. Although Twelve Monkeys deals with the destruction of human civilization by a lethal contagion, and the plague’s aftermath, less of the action centres on the plague itself than on this little boy. Mostly, it’s concerned with a man named James Cole (Bruce Willis), who believes he’s a time-travelling agent sent back from the 2030s, after a small number of survivors retreat to the safety of underground caves. Liberated from a prison cell for the mission to contemporary Philadelphia (ground zero for the virus release), Cole is trying to discover information about its origins that can be used, decades hence, to help make the earth’s ruined surface safe for human habitation. Success means redemption, since Cole would return to his future world a hero. But in an ironic twist, Cole is almost immediately institutionalized; only psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a specialist in “madness and apocalyptic visions,” and fellow patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), who may be a nascent environmental terrorist, suspect Cole’s references to upcoming cataclysmic events may be more than just delusional.

Life During Wartime #28: UNDER THE SKIN (Patreon exclusive)

July 7, 2022Posted inPatreon
by Walter ChawUnder the Skin (2014)U.S.: Fubo TV, Showtime, Kanopy, DirecTV, Spectrum On DemandCanada: Tubi, Shudder, AMC+The first thing my daughter said after the credits rolled on Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin was, "I can't believe Scarlett Johansson wanted to do this. It makes me think of her differently." I've argued for a long time now that ScarJo is among our very best actors. She takes chances. She chooses roles that play with her appearance and challenge how she's perceived--more than challenge it. My daughter said, "Her. She doesn't even appear and she's like the most beautiful woman in Hollywood right…

SlipStreams Vol. 5

July 5, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of July 8, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKIntruder (1989, d. Scott Spiegel (U.S.: AMC+, Vudu, Tubi, Shudder, Pluto TV, Spectrum On Demand, Arrow; Canada: Tubi, Shudder, Arrow, AMC+))Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel made his feature debut with this semi-autobiographical (very semi) slasher flick set within the quaint confines of the Walnut Lake grocery store. Owners Bill (Dan Hicks) and Danny (Eugene Robert Glazer) have just sold the place and tasked the night crew with staying after hours to mark down the prices for clearance--and wouldn't you…

Masks: FFC Interviews Scott Derrickson

July 3, 2022Posted in2022, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Interviews
Derricksoninterviewtitle

Walter Chaw interviews Scott Derrickson,
director of THE BLACK PHONE

I’ve known Scott Derrickson a long time–indeed, an eternity in Internet years. He grew up in Westminster, Colorado, just down the road from where I live now, in a “cone of death” where the plutonium from the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear plant–through a series of fires, meltdowns, and misadventures–was lost into the air in particles a magnitude smaller than pollen. The site is among the most contaminated places on Earth still, though judged to be clean enough to house a “wildlife preserve” and way too much new housing, the residents of which are not informed of the level of radioactivity they’re sitting on. To this day, dogs aren’t allowed at Standley Lake because dogs…dig. We grew up making jokes about the glow coming from the plant at night. Whenever I drove past it as a kid, I would hold my breath with the thought that maybe this would insulate me from irradiation and cancer. Maybe it did.

SlipStreams Vol. 4

June 29, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams, Werewolf
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of July 1, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKBright Lights, Big City (1988, d. James Bridges (U.S.: Roku, Tubi, Redbox, Pluto TV; Canada: Tubi))I loved Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerny's preternaturally cocksure, first-person pomo updating of The Great Gatsby, when I read it in the months before the release of this big-screen adaptation starring Michael J. Fox. The diminutive sitcom megastar spent the years between the first two Back to the Futures mostly eschewing big-money grabs in favour of working on interesting projects with interesting directors, jumping full-body…

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

June 27, 2022Posted in2022, 4K Ultra HD, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

Vlcsnap-2022-06-23-17h05m11s643Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Tiffany Haddish
written by Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten
directed by Tom Gormican

by Bill Chambers There’s a lot I don’t understand about Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent that has nothing to do with its alleged postmodernism. I don’t understand why Nicolas Cage, David Gordon Green, and Demi Moore play “themselves” while Neil Patrick Harris, who plays himself in everything, does not. I don’t understand the point of Green playing himself–that is to say, I don’t understand the point of the director character being David Gordon Green, since a) he’s just an avatar for clout one doesn’t necessarily associate with Green, b) his prior relationship with Cage is never excavated or exploited (they made the not-uninteresting Joe together in 2013), and c) it’s doubtful that enough viewers will know who Green is to justify the casting. I don’t understand Green’s reaction to Cage’s impromptu audition, either, whether his awed “Jesus” is because he’s blown away, appalled, or reacting to an actor–a star–of Cage’s calibre grovelling to the director of The Sitter and Halloween Kills. I don’t understand why the movie spells Nic Cage’s name “Nick Cage”: if it’s to separate onscreen “Nick” from offscreen “Nic,” then why has Nick appeared in all the same stuff as Nic? That “k,” like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent itself, ersatzes Cage. This movie isn’t meta or satire, it’s the Dollar Store version of an American original.

Lightyear (2022)

June 26, 2022Posted in2022, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, Drama, Family, Pixar, Sci-Fi

Lightyear

**/****
screenplay by Jason Headley, Angus MacLane
directed by Angus MacLane

by Walter Chaw Angus MacLane’s handsome-looking Lightyear gets enough things right that it’s unfortunate it can’t quite shake how its best parts are borrowed from Joe Haldeman’s classic The Forever War. It has more problems than that, granted, mainly with how its thin supporting cast fails to give the film the humour and pathos it needs to honour the by-now-familiar “heartwarming tearjerker” Pixar formula. There’s not a lot of rewatch value here, alas, and that has everything to do with Lightyear‘s awkward dialogue and inability to stick the landing–maladies, both, that afflicted co-writer Jason Headley’s previous Pixar outing, the similarly disappointing and COVID-doomed Onward. The highlight of the piece is robot cat SOX (Peter Sohn), who provides the film its credulous audience surrogate as well as its adorable animal-sidekick comic relief. By himself, SOX saves Lightyear, though he can’t elevate it above the airless jokes and pained delivery. What a shame, considering the movie sets a new bar in terms of the complexity of its digital imagery and animation. With Taika Waititi in the cast, I gotta think they could’ve hit him up for a quick joke polish.

SlipStreams Vol. 3

June 24, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of June 24, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKWhat Lies Beneath (2000 (U.S.: rental only; Canada: Tubi))A film that was something to occupy director Robert Zemeckis while he waited for Tom Hanks to shed pounds during the making of Cast Away, What Lies Beneath was unfairly dismissed as a coldly technical exercise when it opened to tepid reviews in July of 2000. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Claire, a recent empty-nester who's just moved to a picture-perfect house by the lake that husband Norman (Harrison Ford) inherited from his father.…

New on Our Patreon

June 22, 2022Posted in2022, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog

Slipstreamsldw

by Bill Chambers Heads-up, current and future Patreons: We recently launched SlipStreams, a weekly column in which Walter Chaw and I take turns recommending four titles currently streaming in either the U.S., Canada, or both. In the current "volume" (#3), which went up this afternoon, I pay tribute to the late, great Ray Liotta in choosing three semi-forgotten films that are among his late-career highlights. Meanwhile, the latest edition (#27) of Walter's regular feature Life During Wartime finds him screening Don't Look Now with his daughter; it might be my personal favourite of this long-running series. These pieces are available to any and all subscribers of our Patreon. We don't do "tiers," since the primary purpose of our Patreon is to support this, the mothersite, but we did feel we owed a few bonus goodies to those generous souls keeping FILM FREAK CENTRAL afloat.

Elvis (2022)

June 20, 2022Posted in2022, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Music, Theatrical

Elvis

***½/****
starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Luke Bracey, Olivia DeJonge
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Sam Bromwell and Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
directed by Baz Luhrmann

by Walter Chaw Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is part Perfume, part Immortal Beloved–which is to say, it’s horny as fuck and formulates music as mass delusion and mind control. Safe to say, the sordid story of the King of Rock-and-Roll is the perfect match for a maximalist director I have found to be excessive to the point of obnoxious, even on those rare occasions where I’ve liked the movie anyway (see: Moulin Rouge!). Before Elvis, there wasn’t an establishing shot Baz didn’t torpedo with gratuitous angles and “whooshing” sound effects; before Elvis, his films were not just childish but relentlessly, punishingly childish. The first half of Elvis is more frenetic than the last, though neither sports any affectations that don’t augment the story in positive ways. Dissolves, triple-split screens, restless camera movements–they all underscore the breathless headlong rush of Elvis’s rise from broke Tupelo hillbilly living in the “Black” part of town to the biggest-selling solo recording artist in history. When it comes time for his inevitable fall, Luhrmann places it in a sociopolitical context, toning down his trademark freneticism in favour of a, most shockingly of all perhaps, thoughtful analysis of several factors that may have played into Elvis’s decline into paranoia, drug abuse, isolation, and despair. A story this familiar in a genre as permanently scuttled by Walk Hard requires a certain wisdom to know what to recap versus what to excavate. Elvis walks that line more than it doesn’t.

Life During Wartime #27: DON’T LOOK NOW (Patreon exclusive)

June 19, 2022Posted inPatreon
by Walter Chaw Don't Look Now (1973) U.S.: Kanopy, Pluto TV Canada: rental only My daughter remembers seeing the first minute of this film years ago when she was a kid, walking by just as I was starting it. She remembers a little girl in a red rain slicker, and a white horse galloping past in the background. She remembers how this alone made her feel uneasy enough, after asking a couple of questions, to tap out. As I've said many times before, our philosophy with our kids was that they could watch anything they want, but there was a price:…

SlipStreams Vol. 2

June 15, 2022Posted inPatreon, SlipStreams
Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of June 17, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKThe Chocolate War (1988 (U.S.: Prime, Paramount+, Epix, Hoopla, Tubi, DirecTV; Canada: Hoopla, Tubi, MGM))An adaptation of Robert Cormier's YA classic from that pre-Harry Potter period when YA wasn't nearly so fulsome or populated, Keith Gordon's pitch-black The Chocolate War covers a fundraising drive at a private Catholic school that, more than a decade before Alexander Payne's Election, takes vicious satirical aim at the thin skin of civilization stretched over our animal natures. In meanness, the film falls somewhere between Williams…

The Trouble with Harry (1955) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code

June 13, 2022Posted in****/****, 1950s, 2022, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, FFC Must-Own, Mystery

Vlcsnap-2022-06-13-14h27m49s769Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, Shirley MacLaine
screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on the novel by Jack Trevor Story
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Once I realized the person I’m supposed to suture with in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry is the title character, the middle of Hitchcock’s three dead protagonists (sandwiched between Rebecca‘s Rebecca de Winter and Psycho‘s Mother), the rest of the movie began to make sense to me. Not a literal sense where the characters’ behaviour is reasonable, thus making the narrative intelligible in a rational way, but an absurdist, Lewis Carroll nightmare sense, where language is revealed to be meaningless and unstable enough to destabilize perceptions of time and space as well. The Trouble with Harry casts Vermont in fall as Wonderland aswarm with madness and violence, lodged in a time-loop and peopled by a gallery of hatters and dormice (and even an Alice, completely over-the-rainbow insane) preserved in an autumnal, solipsistic amber of their own deconstructionist, semantic derangement. The closest analogues in movies are Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup and Michel Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore: the former echoing The Trouble with Harry‘s thesis that if reality is defined by language, then reality is as subject to slippage as language; the latter harking back to this film’s snow-globe meta-fiction, where life and death play out its meaningless permutations in a philosophical exercise inside an alien terrarium. The Trouble with Harry would play well in a double-feature with Scorsese’s existentially terrifying After Hours. Godard’s Alphaville, too–a noir about the prison of words where every room contains a “bible,” which, in reality, is a dictionary with telltale words removed (like “poetry” and “love”), thereby eradicating them from the minds of a citizenry enslaved by a machine god.