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    4 Big Winners, 2 Big Losers in New Movies

    This weekend, a world of wonderful indies opens across CBUS: one waking nightmare, one donkey’s journey, one meticulously observed court case, one astounding documentary – all original, truly original, and all must sees. Plus there are two really awful VOD releases. FYI.

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    Skinamarink

    In theaters

    by George Wolf

    (Tom Hanks SNL voice) “My name is Kyle Edward Ball…and I’m going to scare the HELL out of YOU!”

    And you know what? He just might do it.

    Be extra prepared if the title Skinamarink reminds you of those fun singalongs from Sharon, Lois & Bram. Because Ball’s brand of nightmare fuel taps into the very essence of childhood fears, exploiting those exposed nerves with a committed resolve we haven’t seen since Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.

    Is it safe? It is not.

    Ball’s premise is brilliant simplicity. It’s 1995, and two young children, Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) and Kevin (Lucas Paul), wake in the night to find they are alone, with the windows and doors in their house suddenly gone. In an instant, the stakes are familiar – but not because you’ve seen this before.

    It’s because there’s probably some version of this nightmare in your past. You were just a kid, separated from your parents and trying in vain to reach them or call out for help, or maybe just escape.

    Remember how scared you were? Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae do, and they twist that knife again and again for 100 slightly bloated minutes of dark, disorienting dread.

    Cinematography and sound design are intertwined in an analog, cathode-ray aesthetic that recalls vintage, grainy VHS. The children whisper to each other (“Where do you think Dad is? I don’t know.”) as they wander from room to room, with Ball’s camera never allowing you one second of relief.

    All through this fright night, familiar sources of comfort such as toys and cartoons turn eerily sinister, accentuating the feeling that it’s not just these kids that are in peril, it is childhood itself. POV is often at floor level, and then tight into a corner of the ceiling or high above the room and rising. You squint in the direction of the children’s flashlight, trying in vain to decipher anything about the house that will give you some sense of its layout, and you strain to separate the cracks of white noise from that deeper voice speaking to the children.

    Come upstairs. Look under the bed. Close your eyes.

    Ball started down this harrowing hallway by filming three-to-four minute short films of the actual dreams described by viewers of his YouTube channel. Some two years ago, his 29-minute short Heck emerged as the wonder of primal fear that inspired Skinamarink. And though it is a bit disappointing that the single most bone-chilling (and to be fair, most explanatory) moment of the short didn’t make it in the feature, Ball’s $15,000 budget buys much more killer than filler.

    More than just nightmarish, this is a literal nightmare onscreen. And the intimate nature of nightmares means that the film’s patient, psychological assault is likely to bring out the “nothing happens!” barbs from those seeking more universally visceral thrills. But for others, the whispers of Skinamarink will hit like a sonic boom.

    And they will be hard to shake.

    Grade: B+

    EO

    At Gateweay Film Center

    by Hope Madden

    Little donkeys are having their moment, aren’t they? EO, the star of Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest, has a lot to live up to if he’s going to shine as bright as The Banshees of Inisherin’s Jenny. Of course, he doesn’t have to share the spotlight quite as much.

    This is not to say that the little grey donkey is alone for the narrative film’s 90 or so minutes. As he meanders across Europe on a grand adventure – well, life – he does come across any number of souls, some of them human (including a priceless cameo from the great Isabelle Huppert).

    As we open, EO is a circus performer, beloved partner of the Great Kassandra (Sandra Krzymalska). But protestors shut down the circus, separating the two, and we follow EO.

    Back in 2016, Todd Solondz made a profoundly Todd Solondz movie called Weiner-Dog that followed one dachshund through a number of different owners. Told in vignettes, the film provided a dog’s eye view on a world of pathos and existential dread. It was absurd.

    As absurd as EO sounds on paper – a donkey’s perspective on life, more or less – Skolimowski is entirely, often gorgeously serious, and utterly sincere. Our hero – a sweet and good boy if ever there was one – is not anthropomorphized. He’s a donkey, always and only a donkey, but it is his point of view we take nearly the entire tale. The approach generates almost unendurable empathy because things do not always go well for little EO.

    Michael Dymek’s camera doesn’t stay strictly with EO’s eye view. At times we soar above the trees with a bird, and there are moments of human interaction that take place just outside of EO’s perspective. These sequences are, above all, stunning to view. Dymek’s cinematography amplifies the danger and joy in freedom with exquisite framing and rapturous movement.

    Skolimowski pieces these images together in ways to suggest constant peril as well as beauty. It’s an emotionally exhausting journey, equal parts wonder and pessimism, and it is absolutely unlike any other movie with a dachshund or donkey. It’s unlike any other movie, period.

    Grade: A

    Saint Omer

    At Gateway Film Center

    by George Wolf

    “I am not the responsible party.”

    Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) admits that she deliberately left her 15-month-old daughter on the water’s edge to die, alone at the mercy of the tide. But Mlle. Coly tells a court in Saint Omer, France that she is not to blame.

    Rama (Kayije Kagame), a literature professor and novelist, has made the trip from Paris to attend Coly’s trial. Rama’s plan is to adapt the case into an updated version of the ancient myth of Medea (calculated revenge against an unfaithful husband). But Rama is now four months pregnant, and like Coly, she is a woman of Senegalese descent in a mixed-race relationship. And the more Coly defends herself, the more Rama feels a deepening kinship.

    After a string of documentaries, writer/director Alice Diop moves into narrative features for the first time with her eye for authenticity intact. Coly’s case is based on an actual trial that Diop felt moved to attend in person, and she wrote Rama’s character to reflect her own experience.

    Diop’s approach is strictly observational and mostly anchored in the courtroom where Coly’s story is told, rebutted and debated. And though films with more tell and less show often suffer with emotional connection, Diop mines two impressive lead performances for resonance that comes from the things that are not being said.

    Perspectives shift frequently, and an emotionally complex conversation emerges that begs for humanity in the midst of an unthinkable act. But no matter who may be speaking, or what side they may be on, we feel the bond growing between Rama and Coly, which makes Diop’s one overt camera move in the finale all the more worthy.

    There is a judge in this French courtroom, but Saint Omer invites us to sit on the jury. It is a thoughtful and sensitive discussion that may surprise you. And it is one worth having.

    Grade: A-

    I Didn’t See You There

    On VOD

    by Matt Weiner

    Early on in the documentary I Didn’t See You There, filmmaker Reid Davenport says that his new camera allows him to look for shapes and patterns in a way that wasn’t possible when he wasn’t the one physically filming his movies. Davenport succeeds, wildly—and the end result is so poetic, bracing and beautiful that it’s more than a bit of an understatement.

    I Didn’t See You There is shot entirely from Davenport’s perspective. Often this is from his wheelchair, with unbroken shots on the streets of Oakland, California, that start to take on their own captivating rhythm. At least until Davenport is nearly taken out by inattentive drivers or forced to stop at a blocked crosswalk.

    It’s a deeply personal and unabashedly political film. As Davenport shows, what other choice is there? Every public act, from taking the bus to using the ramp to get into one’s own home, becomes a negotiation with (at best) apathetic parties.

    The presence of a circus tent in his neighborhood becomes a jumping-off point for Davenport to tie in the cultural history of the freak show and this country’s treatment of people with disabilities. It’s a connection Davenport can’t avoid—during a trip back east to his family, he points out that he shares a birthplace with P.T. Barnum.

    At the same time, Davenport interrogates this throughout the film, his intimate filmmaking and perspective on the environment turn the personal documentary into a visually stunning meditation on the connections we have to our built environments.

    Davenport’s eye calls attention to every bump in the street, or shrub encroaching on the sidewalk—there’s a fresh beauty to the tessellated patterns of urban design that he uncovers, and a hostility always there beneath the surface.

    I Didn’t See You There presents an undeniably unique perspective. But it also feels impossible to view one’s own environment the same way afterward.

    Grade: A

    My Father Muhammad Ali: The Untold Story

    On VOD

    by Daniel Baldwin

    What becomes of the child of one of the most famous people in the world? What’s it like to have a father who you never really knew because he was constantly on the road? What’s it like to have a mother that chose the fortune and glory of her husband’s life on the road over you? These are hard questions that this documentary is asking. Ones with very tough answers.

    The title points toward a documentary focused on an untold side of Muhammad Ali’s life, but the actual film itself is almost entirely focused on the current life of one of his children, 50-year-old Muhammad Ali Jr. Junior has lived through decades of drug addiction, harassment, abandonment, financial issues, marital strife, etc. This is about him looking back at the trials, tribulations and mistakes of his own life, in comparison to those of his iconic father.

    Others are interviewed throughout – sometimes about Ali, sometimes about Junior – but Junior himself is the primary storyteller. He is an unreliable narrator; constantly dishing out his version of events and frequently dropping into unprompted impressions of his father as a defensive coping mechanism whenever his own faults are focused on too closely for his liking. It’s rather heartbreaking.

    If that sounds compelling, it is, at least on paper. The filmmakers never seem to settle on any sort of thematic throughline for what they are showcasing, leaving the narrative (or lack thereof) being spun before us to just meander along in a highly segmented fashion. Because of this, the finished work feels less like a film and more like a miniseries that has been chopped down to feature-length.

    The filmmakers know that Junior is often deceiving them, as well as himself, but outside of a few moments with a therapist, he is never called on it. Nor are enough witnesses to the contrary present to fully illustrate this. The sheer lack of voices from his early life leaves us with an unclear picture of his past. Context is key and this film is sorely lacking it.

    There’s also the matter of his best friend/manager, who the filmmakers clearly do not entirely trust, but once again, they never bother to fully interrogate that. If they were intentionally leaving room for interpretation, they left too much. In the end, the final question is less “Are the sins of the father repeated by the son?” and more “Why does this film exist?”

    Grade: D

    Human Resources

    On VOD

    by Tori Hanes

    Are you one of those unfortunate movie-goers cursed with the gift of common sense? Do you find yourself balling your fists until your palms bleed, cheeks flushed, screaming at your screen: “Why don’t you just LEAVE, dammit!” If so, Human Resources may not be the most enjoyable viewing experience for you.

    An important caveat to this conversation is the semi-spectacular circumstances surrounding the film’s creation: first-time director Braden Swope wrote and presumably directed this film at the ripe age of 19. When I – and perhaps you – conjure the hazy memories of those formative years, the image of writing, directing, and editing a feature film doesn’t ring familiar. And the competence with which the feature is shot and edited is reason for praise. Kudos given where kudos are due.

    Unfortunately, those may be the only kudos Human Resources receives in this review. Almost all the film’s shortcomings can be boiled to one issue: jagged, uneven exploration of tone. Demonic happenings in a creepy family hardware store headed by a clueless coward (Hugh McCrae Jr. playing protagonist Sam Coleman) – this plot synopsis sounds like a lobbed softball ready to orbit into a campy homerun. Sadly, the film is never able to reach that altitude. Instead, it dances ever so delicately around camp’s sharp edges, cutting itself while attempting entry. 

    Without a playful side, the story begins to disintegrate into sickeningly serious – and of course, a tale this absurd requires overarching lightness to remain authentic. When the film loses whatever small touch of camp it had, fluorescent light blasts over its many flaws: a silly-but-not-endearing script, often comically bad acting, and obvious story holes. Without the backbone of camp, Human Resources becomes a flaccid mass. 

    Human Resources cashes any moment of audience intrigue as permission to veer the wrong way down the road. As the intricate mystery begins to come together in a semi-satisfying way, the film adds on an additional 30 minutes that suffocates the momentum. An unseen twist is teased, and the reveal launches audiences back into eye-roll territory. When yin swallows yang, all that’s left is an unspectacular circle.

    If you’re going to invest almost two hours in a modern horror flick, pick up something like Ready Or NotHuman Resources will fill you with all of the dread, none of the camp.

    Grade: D

    Listen to George, Hope and Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin run through all of this week’s reviews plus new movie news on THE SCREENING ROOM PODCAST.

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    George Wolf
    George Wolf
    George Wolf is a member of the Columbus Film Critics Assoc. and a freelance contributor for Columbus Underground covering film. George can also be heard on Columbus radio stations Rewind 103.5, Sunny 95, QFM96 and Mix 107.9.
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