Reviews

Emerald Fennell's debut feature is an extremely fractured mix of rape-revenge thriller and black comedy that has a lot of important things to say, and some amazing performances, in particular from Mulligan (perhaps a career best?) and her co-star Bo Burnham.

Its biggest problems lie in its off-the-charts tonal shifts (particularly in the first half of the film). Some scenes aim for thrills and deliver, other aim for laughs and fail. The second pick-up scene, early in the film, is a good example, where the sheer dorkiness of Mulligan's hipster mark should have provided some laughs, but it's played so badly and broadly that any humor to be had just hangs itself in mid-air.

For this movie to really work, you have to be 100% on Mulligan's wavelength (not "side"), yet the script doesn't give her enough exposition to make that connection early on.

Mulligan plays Cassie, a thirty-year-old med school drop-out who is on the edge of either a complete psychotic break or on the verge of a recovery. She kills time by verbally and emotionally terrorizing (would-be?) rapists (or just horny creeps) on the weekend at various clubs. We are never given any real information about what she's actually "doing" to these literal HUNDREDS of men. It's vaguely implied that in some cases, the retributions are violent. While I understand that Fennell doesn't want this film to become an "I Spit On Your Grave" hack fest, the obscurity only makes Mulligan's character harder to get a handle on, and to ultimately understand, until the film's last half hour. I don't want to say IDENTIFY with, as in "like"... I don't need to "like" a protagonist, but Cassie is too much of an enigma, at times almost a schizophrenic one (but she's not playing as a schizo or borderline personality here).

When this movie works, it's gripping, intense, emotional, gratifying. But then afterward you have another scene that feels incredibly contrived, as when Cassie confronts a lawyer, who (unconvincingly) bursts immediately into tears of remorse... prompting HER to cry as well...???? What did I miss? Ditto the scene where she's head-on-a-steering-wheel traumatized following her confrontation with her former med school dean, and then goes into Ms .45 mode, wielding a tire iron.

Sometimes the strength of the actors stranded in these oddball scenes --- many of which simply don't make sense or stretch plausibility to the point of distraction --- can mask the deficiency somewhat. For example, Alison Brie is fine as always, but would her character REALLY stick around Cassie's house after Cassie admits to having set her up to "imagine" she'd been raped... and then turn over collateral for her to continue her rampage. And where does Cassie find all these rent-a-thugs? At the boutique coffee shop she works at? These sorts of plot devices break any spell that Mulligan and Fennell have worked (slavishly) hard to achieve.

I actually watched this twice because I did enjoy the last half the movie and wasn't sure if maybe the tonal shifts and logic gaps were something I was projecting onto the film. But no, I actually only found more plot holes.

Promising Young Woman is still a very unique watch, and worth your time, but it's a rough ride and not an entirely captivating or satisfying one. In the end, I wish Fennell had got off the post and made more hard choices that really defined Cassie. I can't say I really knew or understood her.

Martin Scorsese's latest film --- an adaptation of David Gran's knockout-punch true crime bestseller about the ritualized murders of the Osage in the '20s --- is so structurally flawed and reverse engineered for maximum Double "D" star power that it dilutes itself on-screen. It's like watching a much-anticipated bouquet of roses wilt in an excruciatingly slow, slow time-lapse.

It's hard to believe the change in POV narrative voice --- to that of the criminals than their victims --- was due to studio pressure, considering the length of the film's cut. Maybe because it was so "surprising" that DiCaprio would play such an unflattering part? In the book, the Osage come off as anything but passive victims. It's not easy to be locked into the first two hours with the villains, who are about as subtle as a gang of terrorists in wreaking their havoc. Even if you haven't read the book, the identity of the criminals is revealed almost immediately. In this age of famously arrogant and stupid public criminality, Scorsese might be drawing a parallel back to these felonious, greedy idiots (another problem for me, the villains are quite simply, just morons). DiCaprio and DeNiro's performances never make these maroons remarkable.

The movie doesn't really spark until way past the two-hour point, when Jesse Plemons' G-Man character drops a super-cool Dirty Harry-esque four-word retort as to his mission ("See who's doin' it") to DiCaprio's question as to why he's on his doorstep. Yet even then, the cat and mouse game proceeds in somewhat slow-motion. There are a lot of long pauses in many of the line readings... why, who knows? ("Quiet, I'm acting?")

This is not a bad film by any means. I just prefer Scorsese's movies when he's more in show-off mode ("After Hours", "Taxi Driver", "The Departed"). And there's some of that inventive virtuosity here --- several marvelous zooms and sweeping pan-outs, the ingenious double-eye motif at the start and glorious finish. And the radio show coda is both phenomenal and tear-inducing. Sixty years on, Martin Scorsese's films deserve every bit of the A-list attention they get.

Who knows? Maybe there are layers here I haven't uncovered. I hated Kubrick's The Shining when I first saw it 43 years ago and think now that he meant to subvert the source material rather than interpret it. But the Shining was fiction. A watershed book like Gran's seems to merit a more faithful transition to the screen, at least on first viewing, for me.

Beth de Araujo's Soft & Quiet is getting a lot of positive buzz since Blumhouse picked it up and is mass distributing it. I've seen the film twice now --- just to make sure I'm not missing something really revelatory --- but it consistently appears to fall apart at about the halfway mark, after a squirm-inducing, provocative, and relatively well-performed first half. It's really kind of a shame.

Unfortunately, movies that are this high-minded and well-intentioned --- it's obviously intended as somewhat of a microcosm of the 1/6 riot at the Capitol --- often wind up writing themselves into corners.

Stephanie Estes gamely plays Emily, a kindergarten teacher (not by chance, you'll see) who we follow to an inaugural meeting of like-minded white women in the deep south. Their first meeting is definitely the best thing in the movie, and by far more frighteningly (and saddeningly) real than anything that follows it.

After the meeting... conveniently enough... the only women left are the lower-income ones with less than squeaky-clean rap sheets and demeanors. While stopping to get wine on the way back to her house to continue venting, Emily and her gang run into the victim of her rapist jailbird brother and proceed to bully and harass the Asian woman and her sister.

At this point, you know two things: Em and her posse are not exactly rocket scientists and they're not playing with full decks, either. Their combined IQs might barely edge into the triple digits. And this is a huge problem, as their group psychosis drives them off a metaphorical cliff from which there is no return. Oh yeah, for us either.

So, in creating this parable against hate, racism, etc.... de Araujo has invited us --- via her script and her characters --- to form more stereotypes against women in particular (like they're irrational, emotional, reckless), and against low-income "white trash" types as well... to what purpose? That's what I can't figure out.

Let's be clear. There is no stimulating, edgy, or otherwise "deep" interplay between these women after they transform into The Gang Who Couldn't Pillage Straight. The guys of Reservoir Dogs would get Nobel prizes in comparison. This isn't David Mamet or Neil Labute... it's not even Camille LaPaglia. Without any further character development or dialogue, what we're left with is a plausible plan of organized carnage, incompetently executed by reprehensible characters, that devolves into a painful-to-watch, though well-shot, trash fire.

The twist ending does provide a bit of satisfaction, but by then, I was past the point of caring. It was refreshing though, as many have stated, to see something not drowning in Hate-Male, for a change of pace if nothing else. But the fact that only the men in this picture seem less crazy and even occasionally decent... that makes Soft & Quiet even more confused and disturbing.

Harry Shum Jr.'s cryptic introverted performance pretty much drives this entire film, which is something of a miracle because the plot structure is akin to a Russian Doll puzzle designed by a psychopath. If Shum weren't so completely immersed in this part, it would be a tough sell --- it's an impressive piece of understated acting, and his character's obsession insinuates itself into your subconsciousness throughout much of the picture. He might actually do too good a job here.

Shum plays James, a video and photography geek who's so self-immersed, he can't even tell you what his hobbies are. In truth, he has none, and his "job" is nothing short of what a room full of video duplicating equipment could do, even in 1999, in which this film is set. That should provide some clues that something isn't "quite right".

I recently learned about the unsolved WGN Max Headroom hijackings in the late '80s prior to watching "Broadcast Signal Interference". That helped pique my interest, but I also thought the Kabuki-like nightmarish images and sequences that James is pursuing (supposed broadcast hijacks), were creepy and effective. The fact that the images are cribbed from a supposed pat schlock sitcom about an android wife is also sneakily subversive and another neon sign-post about James' relationship with his wife, who disappeared three years earlier.

There are plenty of articles out there that explain this film in detail, but I'll be honest with you --- I didn't put it together, yet I still kind of liked it, even after the surreal last quarter. Director Jacob Gentry does a fine job with his cast of minor characters, none of which are throwaways.

I only wish the film's script gave us more of a backstory to Shum's character that might have made what Gentry was going for more accessible. I had suspicions throughout the film of what was really happening, but never enough confirmation to convince me. It would have made this film even more suspenseful and powerful. It's not like "Jacob's Ladder" for instance (Adrian Lyne's original of course) which made a more effective visual split between the real and the imagined.

But it did engage me, and it's really "out there" in a genre of thrillers that for the most part has been done to death, like a marathon of CSI reruns. I just can't penalize a film for being "smarter" than I am.

"X" is an odd, almost intentionally off-putting homage to '70s/'80s Slasher tropes, designed to induce a queasy sense of self-conscious dread. I think most people have either forgotten or are too young to remember that sensation while watching a horror film --- and half the fun of this movie is watching West play with and ultimately turn these by now ancient tropes on their heads.

Ti West's films always polarize audiences in general, usually more die-hard old-school horror fans lean more towards them, as they rely more on suspense than shock value. If you're used to the clockwork jump scares and overly amped sound mix stings of most modern horror films, you probably won't like it. There's really only one such JS (well done), and another with no "sting" on the audio, because it's so obvious a set-up, almost as if West is mocking the jump-scare trope, in general.

"X" follows a group of rag-tag pornographers, mostly culled from a low-brow Texas strip club (seen briefly in the opening) whose producer (Martin Henderson) has his eyes locked on the burgeoning home video market of the early '80s. Henderson's performance is actually the weakest of the lot, hung more on aw-shucks self-parody --- his lines come off more like a circus barker and it seems at times that the actor *needs* us to like the character (WHY?).

They take off for the sticks in a cargo van (one of many "Texas Chainsaw" refs) minus windows and psycho hitcher and come to a large pastoral farm on the outskirts of Houston owned by two crotchety oldsters, intending to conceal their free location grab, though things don't go as planned, of course.

Thankfully, the rest of the cast acquits themselves nicely, and their back-stories resonate with thoughtful authenticity. The casting of Brit Mia Goth in the lead is a good, albeit daring move, given her Maxine plays (again) as something of a self-parody. When Henderson says she has that "X factor" you kind of just shake your head. It's not Goth that's the problem, but the character she's playing, though West is again toying with our expectations. Maxine's caked-on blue eyeshadow and overly studied line readings in the "film within a film" play as tragedy more often than not. Brittany Snow and Jenna Ortega, by contrast, seem to be having five times the fun in comparison and their energy is badly needed. Ortega lets loose with what is probably the Best Scream that I've seen/heard in twenty years (wrenching and heartbreaking at the same time) and Snow's death scene is priceless and expertly executed in the effects department.

At about the mid-point you know the carnage is coming and each kill delivers something a little more off-putting than you expect --- a tad more gore and suffering, maybe a strange angle or creepy lighting effect added to the mix. It's definitely a horror film for people who enjoy the nuances of film --- literally none of the frames play as haphazardly planned or shot.

And the ending pulls out a nice twist (and delivers what is the funniest final Tarantino-esque line of a horror film I've seen, maybe ever) to make it worthwhile.

There's a lot going on in "X" at the sub-textual level --- most specifically with the "you have wanton sex, you gotta die!" saw. But even that is not slung around thoughtlessly. It actually makes some subversive statements about personal choices and consequences of lives lived or unlived without getting too moral high-horsey.

It's a nice balancing act of thriller and homage that takes some time to appreciate, distinctly absent of any and all cheap thrills. But if you've seen and liked West's "House of the Devil" and "The Innkeepers", two earlier works that rely almost entirely on their build-up for effectiveness --- it's safe to say you'll like "X". Even "The Sacrament" (which had as many lows as highs) still built suspense and dread as few horror films bother to do any more. And that's the main reason I continue to follow and enjoy Ti West.

Sound of Violence is a film that's so inept on so many levels that it's truly disturbing --- not in the way horror films are meant to be, either. It's a product of a truly deranged mind. There are more vomit-inducing films out there (Salo, Blood-sucking Freaks), but I'm not so sure Alex Noyer understands that Sound of Violence is repugnant. That's the disturbing part.

The premise is interesting, but the execution is haphazard and sadistic, the acting is marginal, and (most of all) the script just doesn't make sense. Things occur in this movie that defy logic and rationality, and I'm talking about how events just seem to "happen" with no lead-in, background, or reasoning barring that maybe the anti-heroine has super-powers. That leaves the possibility that it's a black comedy.... no, that's not it either. Sound of Violence would have to have something to parody, and it doesn't, except maybe itself.

Alexis grows up deaf and to add to her trauma, she witnesses her PTSD-addled father brutally bludgeon her mother to death. Then she grows up to go on a killing spree of her own to (I guess?) relive the trauma in some euphoric attempt at self-healing through the sound of her victims being beaten, cut up, and tortured to death in a variety of twisted but not very interesting ways (think of a dull version of "Happy Birthday To Me"... wow).

Why does she have this sadistic psychopathology? No one knows, or seems to care except for the ridiculously stapled-in cop character and Alexis' best friend, Marie (I actually felt sorry for Lili Simmons here. Her performance is the only one in the movie that feels genuine).

Alex Noyer apparently gets off on gross-out special effects. There's literally nothing else to enjoy here unless you're a serial killer. A shame someone who could actually craft a script wasn't in the budget. The last time I saw something this amateurish was a film called LA Slasher, another Cali-made home video cheapy with no sense of style, sense, or coherence.

This is more a warning than a review, and I echo others here. Please, stay away. Unless snuff movies are your idea of a fun time.

I really wanted to like this film. Julia Garner works the hell out of the very little she is given to work with. But she's not chewing a script with the bite, resonance, or action of her work on Ozark. If only.

On the whole, I enjoy low-key films like this, especially when they are visually appealing (this is). I know the point is to be put in the head of the protagonist, but the main problem, beyond the airy nature of the "plot", is that nothing happens to Garner's character that is not (sadly) commonplace in the Real World. That doesn't make what she suffers right, but it also doesn't make for a very intriguing or empathic set-up, unless maybe you've never held ANY office job before, whatsoever.

The Assistant comes to life briefly when Matt Macfadyen, doing a bone-chilling turn as a mid-level HR flunkie, serves it to Garner straight: Nothing she's complaining about is out-of-line, everybody knows there's a problem, but guess what.... her boss is the Big Boss, and for better or worse all she's going to accomplish by letting off steam is getting herself fired faster than she would have otherwise.

This film should have gone deeper, should have exposed more layers of the environment and added a few more plot elements, but the snail's pace of this film guarantees it will obsolete itself in most viewers memories shortly after they turn it off. By the mid-point (45 freaking minutes in) , almost nothing develops except for a few brief angry phone conversations as we follow Garner around the office doing mundane grunt-level tasks. I think it was a good move to keep Big Boss off camera. It's obvious who that character is modeled on, but there's nothing enlightening here.

Yes, bosses can be jerks... sexist, selfish, pigs. Yeah, we get that. They can also implicate their subordinates in any number of filthy scams solely for their own sadistic pleasure and monetary benefits. You either put up with it or you quit. No movement will change the fact that most people are egocentric, greedy, and flawed.

This film won't change anything either. It simply doesn't try hard enough.

If you've not seen the original, I'd recommend catching it before watching Brahms: The Boy II. A lot of reviews indicate there is little carried over from the original, but in fact there's quite a lot. Also remember most of the critics hated the original as well, a fact I've never been able to reconcile.

The original worked so well because, unlike most thrillers in this horror subgenre, most notably "Annabella", The Boy plays out on a more psychological level of horror and pure mystery. It also helped that Lauren Cohan's performance was good enough to stretch believability when Greta, the heroine she played, fell under the doll's spell herself. To have her on the run from an abusive relationship was a subplot that worked to the original's advantage, spiking the tension and the stakes for all involved.

With The Boy II, we have another good structural, psychological subplot and a another above-par actress, Katie Holmes, without whom, quite frankly, I don't think this picture would be worth a watch. Holmes has been known to elevate shaky material in the past ("Abandon" most notably) and she doesn't do the celebrity-walk-on here --- she's committed to portraying a damaged character, this time the victim of a brutal home invasion, which adds a creepy weighty touch of brutality and danger to a film that's lightweight by virtue of genre alone.

In this sequel, the doll effects are subtler and perhaps more creepy because of it. The big problem with Boy II is that, unlike the original, it relies on demonic possession --- whereas the original explained everything away in non-supernatural terms, increasing the horror and power of the story considerably.

If you're looking for a movie with the scare factor of Child's Play, neither Boy movie measure up.... they're simply on another, less visceral creep-out plane.

There are good performances by Christopher Convery, as Jude, who smartly underplays the bad seed role convincingly, and the always fine Ralph Ineson.

It's in the last third of the film where Brahms "history" is unearthed that things go awry and the SFX team goes into full-tilt overload trying to impress each other and things go downhill fast. I was hoping for a suitably non-happy ominous ending --- what we get is yet another predictable pasted on excuse for another sequel --- that tied back to the home invasion in some way, but it's probably too much to expect.

I have a hunch that, as the writer and director are the same as in the original (never a bad thing) that this ending was forced on the filmmakers. iTunes has a director's cut and an alternative ending (that I have yet to explore) if you purchase the movie. I wouldn't recommend that unless you're a fan of the original, but it will be interesting to see if the vision of the creators of The Boy produced something a bit more satisfying than what we've gotten in the theatrical cut.