What’s your pleasure? Young Adult? Younger than that? Grown-up stuff? Foreign? Documentary? Anime? Mystery? Thriller? Horror? Whatever it is, there’s a movie for it this weekend. Not all of them are great, though, so let us sort this out for you.
Where the Crawdads Sing
In theaters
by George Wolf
“I had to do life alone. People don’t stay.”
Well-placed within a novel, those words could have major impact. But when you tell it to a movie audience, the power of your visual medium is wasted. You’re not showing us anything, you’re reading to us.
And like so many of these stories of a special girl who hides in plain sight, the big screen version of the Delia Owens bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing employs voiceover narration too early and too often. That’s disappointing, because the film does have its moments.
Most of those moments come from Daisy Edgar-Jones, who stars as Kya Clark, the “Marsh Girl” of Barkley Cove, NC who’s on trial in the late 1960s for the murder of local rich boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson).
Kya won’t agree to a plea deal, and throughout her defense from kindly lawyer Tom Milton (the always reliable David Strathairn), director Olivia Newman weaves in flashbacks of a reclusive young girl who grows up alone in the marshes, somehow emerging closer to Miss Carolina than Nell.
Overthinking it? Maybe, but seeing Beast of the Southern Wild screenwriter Lucy Alibar’s writing credit brings more attention to how often this self-reliance tale leans into fantasy. She and Newman sanitize the southern swamp song for convenience, replacing realistic grit with a makeover-in-waiting.
But if you haven’t read the book, there is a surprise or two in store, and a nuanced turn from Edgar-Jones (Fresh, TV’s Normal People and War of the Worlds) that stands out in a parade of broadly-brushed role players.
The lessons about classism and misogyny may be admirable, but they’re as obvious and as soft-peddled as the quick glimpses of racism and the idyllic marsh environment that’s somehow free of thunderstorms or bug bites.
Where the Crawdads Sing does Southern Gothic like Justin Beiber doing Delta blues. You’ll recognize the words and music, but any true feeling is bogged down by all the polish.
Grade: C
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
In theaters
by Hope Madden
Brimming with wholesome, plucky charm reminiscent of an altogether lost style of filmmaking, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris dares you to dream.
A working-class woman enchanted with a Dior gown decides to scrimp, gamble and save until she can afford one of her own. That’s an adventure in itself, but once the funds are secured, Mrs. Harris is off to the City of Light to make her dream come true.
Lesley Manville is wonderful in the title role. She manages somehow not to turn Ada Harris into a “by crikey guvna” cartoon character. Like the hero of Paul Gallico’s several “Mrs. ‘Arris” novels, the widowed cleaning lady does drop a quaint colloquialism now and again. But Manville’s performance glows from within, her lovely blue eyes convincing us of Mrs. Harris’s cleverness, optimism and indefatigable spirit.
Director Anthony Fabian surrounds Manville with remarkable talent, from Jason Isaacs to Lambert Wilson to the great Isabelle Huppert. Each has a lesson to teach Mrs. Harris, and each very definitely has something to learn. But the film never leans toward comeuppance as a means of satisfaction. Instead, Fabian’s tale, co-written with Carroll Cartwright and Keith Thompson, takes pleasure in warmth and extols the virtues of empathy.
The writing team delivers a nuanced version of Gallico’s tale, one that’s hardly about capitalistic pleasures. Mrs. Harris’s arc aligns more with the garbage men on strike than with the bourgeoisie who can afford (but may not deign to pay for) designer frocks.
Still.
The charm wanes long before the two-hour mark. Even Manville, whose performance is a sheer joy, can’t overcome some of the more tiresome and hokey material. There are too many characters with too many entanglements, each of which is too tidily and thoroughly buttoned up.
Had Fabian been able to trim about 20 minutes from Mrs. Harris’s adventure, the result might have been pure pleasure. Instead, it’s a sometimes tedious but just as often delightful way to window shop.
Grade: B-
Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
In theaters
Hope Madden
Who’s up for a perfectly harmless, slight, not especially funny cartoon? Well, depending on how hot it is outside and how bored your kids are, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank could be worse.
Hank (Michael Cera) dreams of being a samurai. Ika Chu (Ricky Gervais) dreams of ridding the land of this ugly little town that ruins the view from his palace. How about making Hank the samurai that protects that ugly village? Hank will be a terrible samurai! He’s a dog! Who ever heard of a dog samurai?
Well, who ever heard of a cat Western? But that’s what we essentially have here, because Hank has crossed many treacherous lands to find his way to the land of cats so he could fulfill his destiny, even if nobody there wants him. Like at all.
OK, maybe little Emiko (Kylie Kuioka), who also dreams of becoming a samurai. But definitely not Jimbo (Samuel L. Jackson), the town drunk who used to be a samurai before shame led him to catnip.
It sounds like it should be funny. There’s also the supporting voice cast, if you need to be impressed: George Takei, Michelle Yeoh, Djimon Hounsou, Aasif Mandvi, Gabriel Iglesias, Mel Brooks.
Brooks also co-wrote the screenplay, which explains a lot. A dozen or so jokes littered throughout the film might have been funny 60 or so years before the target audience was born. Very few jokes connect to dogs, cats, samurai films, Westerns—anything in particular, but they lack that fun, random feel. A giant toilet figures prominently. There is flatulence.
Cera and Jackson definitely share an odd couple quality—enough that I’d love to see them do a live action film together. But Yeoh and Takei are wasted, and Gervais gets no good dialog to deliver (though he does a villain well). Hounsou’s fun.
The movie looks fine—not great, but fine. Its themes about acceptance are muddled and soft peddled, though—another victim of weak writing.
A profoundly odd short film called Bad Hamster precedes Paws of Fury, though. There’s that. Just depends how hot it is, I guess.
Grade: C-
Clara Sola
At Gateway Film Center
by Hope Madden
It’s rare for a film to tackle the difference between spirituality and religion with as much beauty and empathy as Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Costa Rican treasure, Clara Sola.
Clara (a remarkable Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is a middle-aged woman living with her mother and niece in a remote area of the country. Her closest friend is a white horse, Yuca, that the family lets to a neighbor each morning to use with tourists. When the neighbor hires a summer replacement named Santiago (Daniel Castañeda Rincón), something in Clara awakens.
Making her feature debut, Álvarez Mesén is already a master of showing without telling. Her film unveils Clara’s story moment by moment, but never feels deliberate. Using mainly nonactors gives Clara Sola a lived-in, authentic feel, while Sophie Windqvist’s camera and Ruben De Gheselle’s score immerse Clara and her family in something both natural and enchanting.
Chinchilla Araya, a dancer by trade, delivers an unaffected, unselfconscious performance you can’t look away from. Simultaneously delicate and fierce, it’s a turn perfectly suited to the magical realism the filmmaker develops.
Castañeda Rincón’s tenderness is forever surprising, and the two develop an easy but heartbreaking chemistry. Álvarez Mesén, who writes along with Maria Camila Arias, isn’t afraid to complicate characters—the kind of complexity rarely given to those in such a rural setting.
No one in Clara’s world is one-dimensional, nor is the filmmaker’s take on family. The love inside Clara’s house may be what feels most believable and sincere—and damaging. But what emerges is a clear look at the way spirituality is reined in and controlled by religion. Even clearer are the marks left by the women who enforce patriarchal order.
Clara Sola is an utterly gorgeous film unlike any other. It moves at its own pace, unnerves as it goes, and leaves you shaken but hopeful.
Grade: A-
Both Sides of the Blade
At Gateway Film Center
by George Wolf
Claire Denis is an endlessly fascinating filmmaker. She might be working in horror (Trouble Every Day), sci-fi (High Life), documentaries (Toward Mathilde, Venice 70) or shorts (various), but Denis is always mining ways to subvert your expectations and probe her characters’ motives.
With Both Side of the Blade (originally titled Fire), Denis digs into the erotic drama landscape via the same game plan, crafting an abstract and often challenging narrative that’s built around a good ol’ love triangle.
Sara (Denis favorite Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Titane‘s Vincent Lindon) are longtime partners, and when the film opens they are wrapping up a vacation that seems to have been a wonderfully affectionate and often orgasmic time.
But back home, Sara catches a glimpse of her former lover Francois (Grégoire Colin) and is left shaken. Feelings are stirred even more by Jean’s new plan to start a business with Francois. The two men are also old friends, and Sara’s nearly decade-old decision to leave Francois for Jean seems like a wound long healed.
Well, that depends.
And as the past begins to fracture the couple’s present, Jean is also working to mend the relationship with his teenage son (Issa Perica) that was strained from Jean’s stint in prison years earlier.
But while all of the stakes may be easy enough to grasp, Denis and co-writer Christine Angot twist the personal interactions in intriguing ways. Denis doesn’t do sentimentality, but the film’s first two acts present character choices and dramatic histrionics that just don’t ring true unless we allow for some intimacies that will not be divulged.
Binoche and Lindon are astounding together, locking Sara and Jean into a conflict fueled by a battle with their own identities, as Colin provides the mysterious temptation always lurking on the periphery.
Why does Jean seem to be pushing his wife toward her former lover, only to burn with jealousy? Does Sara truly love either man, or only a version of herself that always seems out of reach?
It’s only in the final act that Denis moves away from pulling at the seams of this genre to let her actors deliver a finale rich with emotional honesty. Peace is finally made, and not only with the choices from Sara and Jean’s respective pasts. Challenges and complexities from the film’s earlier moments melt away, and Both Sides of the Blade becomes a moving and rewarding psychological study.
Grade: A-
Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down
At Gateway Film Center
by George Wolf
If the title Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down immediately has you humming a certain Tom Petty tune, that’s fine. In fact, the way the film incorporates that and other hits, and music in general, is one of its many charms.
Giffords was an Arizona Congresswoman and a rising star in the Democratic party when she was shot in the head while meeting constituents in Jan. of 2011. Music therapy was pivotal to Giffords’s quest to regain her speech, and directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West are gifted with intimate home video footage that conveys the magnitude of her comeback story.
Giffords chances of surviving the gunshot were less than ten percent, and in fact her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, was at one point informed that his wife had died. But when Gabby fought back, Kelly was convinced she would one day want to look back on her journey, so he picked up a video camera.
There’s little doubt that Cohen and West (the Oscar-nominated RBG) have a healthy admiration for Giffords, but they make a pretty compelling case why the rest of us should be “Gab-ified,” too. Her courage, strength and determination cannot be denied.
Archival footage and interviews with fans (including former President Obama) outline Gabby’s transition from manager of the family’s Arizona tire store to fresh-faced Washington centrist. She’s nearly impossible to dislike, while her partnership with the space-traveling Kelly sends the all-American appeal into the stratosphere.
And when Cohen and West line up footage of Gabby’s brain surgery alongside her husband’s intricate space station docking maneuver, it’s game over and the feels have won.
So when the film transitions to the horrors of America’s gun violence epidemic, it seems at first like too much of a tonal clash. But as Kelly is elected to the Senate and Giffords focuses on her Gun Owners For Safety movement, it’s clear that the issue is just as much a part of Gabby as is the music she loves. Avoiding her current advocacy would result in an incomplete picture.
Don’t be fooled by the relentless positivity here. Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down isn’t simply a greatest hits mixtape made by fans for more fans. It’s a gritty story of survival, and of making a commitment to making a difference.
And the joy of jamming to the 80s. Can’t forget that one.
Grade: A-
The Deer King
At Gateway Film Center
by Matt Weiner
An empire torn apart by war. A fatal disease spread by wild attack dogs. A lone warrior who would do anything to protect his young cub. And the directorial debut of a legendary animator.
On paper, The Deer King has all the elements of a modern animated classic. And visually, there is plenty to admire in Masashi Ando’s first feature film, co-directed with Masayuki Miyaji and based on the fantasy novel by Nahoko Uehashi.
The story follows the exploits of Van (Shinichi Tsutsumi), the last surviving Lone Antler warrior. The battle heroics of this fierce group of fighters from the kingdom of Aquafa helped lead to an uneasy peace with their ruling empire, Zol. These two nationalities have enjoyed a decade of fragile co-existence that threatens to collapse with the resurgence of a deadly fever.
Ando is a giant in the animation world, having served as animation director for Hayao Miyazaki on Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, as well as on 2016’s wildly successful Your Name. That’s a lot of pressure for a feature debut when your resume includes some of the best of Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and others.
On the animation side, at least, The Deer King succeeds. The sprawling epic fantasy offers up a lush world that takes great enjoyment in slowing down the action in favor of small details—iridescent grass, otherworldly hallucinations, the love between Van and his adopted daughter, Yuna (Hisui Kimura).
Too often though, The Deer King is a lot better looking than it is comprehensible. The pacing is admirable for allowing the relationship between Van and Yuna to take center stage, but it also compresses the action into some erratic plotting choices—things are surprisingly quiet for an epic realm facing down a genocidal epidemic.
At the same time, the film refuses to linger too long on the sort of world-building that makes diving into a new fantasy world so enjoyable, even with languid action. It falls to a mix of brief flashbacks and heavy-handed exposition to put all the pieces in play.
From the rebellious court machinations that may be playing a part in the disease to hints of the great wars between the two cultures, The Deer King shows occasional flashes of a wider world that would have been very much worth spending time on. It’s a testament to Ando and the work of his animators that there are enough moments of beauty to hang onto, though they never truly come together as a whole.
Grade: C
Landis: Just Watch me
On VOD
by Hope Madden
There’s nothing like an underdog story to help you forget every miserable thing that’s happened and just remember that sometimes, things go right for good kids.
If that’s what you need—and honestly, who doesn’t right now?—filmmaker Eric Cochran would like you to meet Landis Sims.
Born with a condition that left him without hands or feet, Landis Sims decided early that he was a baseball player. And he is.
Cochran’s a veteran behind the camera and it shows. He balances baseball action with home movies, interview material with fly-on-the-wall family footage to deliver something that seems intimate without feeling like an invasion of privacy.
Never showy or sensational, the film settles into an earnest, understated groove that lets the story tell itself. We’re with young Landis as his prosthetist helps him figure out how to hold a bat. We’re there from tee ball through little league to high school baseball.
Nobody has to tell you this kid works hard. Nobody has to take you aside to point out that he’s actually quite a good ball player. Cochran lets his images speak for themselves.
The footage is often remarkable, and the way Cochran uses his camera to create echoes of Landis over the years bridges time. Following him for 8 years gives the documentary the intimacy of Richard Linklater’s 2014 masterpiece Boyhood.
Mercifully missing those maudlin moments that so often mark “inspiring true story” docs, Just Watch Me sidesteps wallowing and trauma because it doesn’t suit the subject. It doesn’t seem part of Sims’s makeup. This is not to say Cochran shies away from the reality of this particular life, just that there’s no manufactured sentimentality.
There’s nothing forced or false about the documentary. It sometimes feels as if Just Watch Me repeats information in an attempt to stretch its running time to feature-length, but it’s not hard to justify a few extra minutes with this extraordinary kid.
Grade: A-
Diary of a Spy
On VOD
by Isaiah Merritt
The big screen has become oh so littered with the glamorous life of the fearless spy and their sonic-speed cars, fancy attire, and femme fatale sidekicks – all gorgeously accessorized by striking visuals, epic shots, and glittering cinematography. As entertaining as this style of filmmaking can be, there has been a lack of any opposing forces in the genre.
Where’s the grit? Where’s the darkness? Where’s the reality? Where’s the BEEF?!!
Diary of A Spy, written and directed by Adam Christian Clark, offers a dark and hardy perspective through the lens of a traumatized woman who has dedicated her life to a cause that may destroy her.
Anna, played with stellar precision by Tamara Taylor, must somehow find a new foundation while she manages a high-stakes assignment that causes her to mix business with pleasure in this slow-burn thriller. When the lines between assignment and romance begin to blur, the plot thickens, ushering in a much-earned climax.
From shot to shot and scene to scene, Clark displays a very clear voice as an auteur. The direction, writing, editing, and cinematography create a cohesive world rich with the rawness of life.
The consistency of performances solidifies the strength of the film and gives the piece heart. Leads Taylor and Reece Noi are in no small part responsible for the success of the film. Especially in the closing scene, Noi proves he is a force to be reckoned with – a quiet storm of awkward realism.
Meanwhile, Paulina Leija offers a scene-stealing performance in a supporting role.
This is a film that takes some time to gain momentum. However, with clear direction, a cohesive vision, and good performances to match, Diary of a Spy is a refreshing take — a spy film soaked in realism.
Grade: A-
Glasshouse
On VOD
by Rachel Willis
Hidden away in a sanctuary, a mother, her three daughters, and one son do their best to avoid a disease known as The Shred. Glasshouse is the kind of slow burn that drags you in gradually and inexorably. Co-writing with Emma Lungiswa De Wet, director Kelsey Egan knows how to pull the tension like thread through a wound.
Curiosity killed the cat, but it seems Bee (Jessica Alexander) can’t help herself when a stranger stumbles upon the family. While each of the women cares for brother Gabe, who has been affected by The Shred, their mercy has its limits.
A few particularly gruesome scenes make you wonder who to be afraid of in this world.
Egan’s world-building is richly detailed. The youngest girl sings a nursery rhyme with her older brother that centers around the new world. The mother holds a religious service with its own rites and rituals. Stories are told that suggest the world that once was.
The richness of the score and the beauty of the setting enhance the feeling of watching a fairy tale, but every so often something happens to remind us that this isn’t an idyllic other world. It’s a nightmare with no end.
After COVID, which has its cameo, The Shred has a false ring as a toxin. Egan isn’t interested in the realities of disease but in the unreliability of memory. When the world has been stripped away, whose memories are significant? Which ones are important? Does the truth matter anymore?
Each character comes to life in the film, but Anja Taljaard’s turn as Evie is a standout. Adrienne Pearce as Mother also commands the screen whenever she appears. Newcomer Kitty Harris plays a large role in the beginning as Daisy but her presence shrinks as the film progresses, which is a shame since the youngest member of the cast does the best job at convincing us to accept this world for what it is.
With a film that spins so many possibilities, it’s nearly impossible to land on explanations that will satisfy everyone. Some things are better left to the imagination, but it can be hard to leave loose ends untied. The film falls victim to wanting to find some reason for its events. Those reasons will rivet some and disappoint others.
For a film like this, it’s best to enjoy the journey rather than the destination.
Grade: B+
Good Madam
On Shudder
by Hope Madden
There are so many things about Celine Sciamma’s masterpiece Portrait of a Lady on Fire that stay with me. For example, the way men haunt the film without ever really being onscreen.
Director Jenna Cato Bass employs a similar strategy in her psychological thriller Good Madam, a film where white people are all but absent yet still suffocatingly present.
The South African film catches up with Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) and her daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya) on their way to see Tsidi’s mother (Nosipho Mtebe). Tsidi is not entirely welcome, not happy to be there, but here they are: mother, daughter and granddaughter sharing servants quarters in the home of a wealthy, dying white woman.
The film’s story has an unstructured authenticity about it, likely stemming from its improvisational storytelling (essentially everyone in the cast is credited for writing the film). Conversations ring true in ways that are sometimes touching, sometimes startling. Scenes rarely feel like breadcrumbs leading through the mystery inside this house, and yet, that’s what they are.
The film walks the line between political allegory and supernatural horror with ease, conjuring dread from the opening moments. Cato Bass twists that knife as Tsidi rails against her mother’s slavish devotion to the catatonic homeowner. Present meets recent past, all of it overshadowed by a long, horrifying South African history.
Cato Bass and her cast confront colonialism, both present and past, through the eyes of three generations. The film repurposes familiar images, often effectively, sometimes calling to mind Jordan Peele’s Get Out, among other genre fare.
Cosa’s performance is especially strong and unpredictable and she seems to transform physically from scene to scene to suit the character’s mood.
The ambiguities of the storyline can be as frustrating as they are refreshing, but Good Madam doesn’t waste your time. It’s a savvy, satisfying subversion of history and horror.
Grade: B+
Gone in the Night
On VOD
by Brandon Thomas
Winona Ryder was arguably the queen of the late 80s/early 90s when it came to counter-culture or oddball movies. Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are all either bonafide classics or have become cult favorites in their own right. While the 2000s weren’t as kind to Ryder, her career came roaring back with the massive success of Stranger Things.
With Gone in the Night, Ryder makes her way back to the big screen in a film that might not make the same lasting impression as her earlier movies.
Kath (Ryder) and her boyfriend, Max (John Gallagher Jr. of 10 Cloverfield Lane and Hush) drive deep into the woods for a relaxing cabin getaway. Upon arrival, the two find that another couple, Greta (Brianne Tiu of Amazon’s I Know What You Did Last Summer) and Al (Owen Teague of It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two) have already moved in for the weekend.
After some tense back and forth, it’s decided that Kath and Max will stay for the night before heading home. After a night of board games, and light flirting, Kath turns in first. In the morning, Kath finds that both Max and Greta have disappeared. A seemingly distraught Al claims to have caught them hooking up during the night. As Kath tries to figure out why Max abruptly left, flashbacks begin to piece this muddled tale together.
Director Eli Horowitz weaves a clever mystery that patiently moves through the past and present. The film’s climax isn’t dependent on opening a satisfying mystery box. No, it’s more about how the film tries to subvert expectations along the way – and not always to a rewarding conclusion.
There’s an attempt to comment on mismatched partners in relationships with Kath and Max. These two couldn’t be further from the same page when it comes to what they want out of a relationship or what they want out of life. Even holding a conversation feels like a chore for them. The link between this theme and where the film eventually ends up is murky and never really comes together succinctly.
The mix in tone is where Gone in the Night stumbles most explicitly. The film’s original title The Cow, telegraphs a much more subversive film than the neo-noirish thriller the new title hints at. The third act twist would be much more satisfying had the lead-up not been as sardonic. Even the character motivations feel tacked on and convoluted.
The cast handles the material much better than expected – although most of them feel adrift due to the tonal inconsistencies.
Ryder delivers a solid bedrock performance as the in-the-dark (pun fully intended) partner. It’s nice to see her as the lead in features again, and the actor continues to show that she never lost the capability to command the screen.
Gallagher Jr. offers another variation of the “bearded slacker” he’s been doing for the last five years. Despite the repetition, Gallagher is good at what he does. The standout is the always dependable Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Copycat). Mulroney brings his on-point, affable charm, but also infuses the performance with a hint of darkness to keep the audience on its toes.
Gone in the Night is a thriller that tries to offer up something new in a tried and true genre. Unfortunately, new doesn’t always mean good.
Grade: C
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