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    Blondes, Ghosts and Zombies – A Wild Mix in Theaters This Week

    Bow wow wow yippy yo yippi yay – Charlize Theron has come to save August. Can she do it? Well, if you could not possibly care less, we may have your answer because among the most poetic and lovely films we’ll see this year also opens in Columbus this weekend. Plus, one very persistent zombie. Everybody’s happy!

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    Atomic Blonde

    It’s Berlin in ’89. The wall’s about to come down, the Cold War’s coming to an end, but there’s this pesky double agent issue to contend with, and a list of coverts that has fallen in to the wrong hands. MI6 sends in one lethal operative, Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), to check in with their embedded agent Percival (James McAvoy) and work things out.

    What to expect: intrigue, Bowie songs, boots – so many boots! – and a great deal of Charlize Theron beating up on people. Mayhem of the coolest sort.

    From the opening car crash through half a dozen other expertly choreographed set pieces to the action pièce de résistance, Theron and director David Leitch make magic happen. Each sequence outshines the one before, leading up to a lengthy, multi-villain escapade shot as if in one extremely lengthy take. (It isn’t, but the look is convincing and the execution thrilling.)

    Theron delivers. Reliable as ever, McAvoy is once again that guy you don’t know whether to love or hate – probably because he always looks like he’s smiling and crying simultaneously. He makes for a wild and dicey counterpoint to Theron’s sleek and cool presence.

    Precise and percussive, the action propels this film. Leitch’s cadence outside these sequences sometimes stalls, however, and not every casting choice works out.

    The storyline itself is equal parts convoluted and obvious, with far too many conveniences to hold up as a real spy thriller. But unplug, soak up that Berlin vibe, appreciate the action, and you’ll do fine.

    Grade: B-

    Ghost Story

    Before some empty misnomers such as “prestige horror” are bandied about, let’s be clear: this is not a horror movie.

    But what A Ghost Story is not hardly matters when what it is remains this beautiful. Writer/director David Lowery has crafted a poetic, moving testament to the certainty of time, the inevitability of death and the timeless search for connection.

    Opening with a telling quote from Virginia Woolf’s short story “A Haunted House,” Lowery shows us Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as a loving couple at odds over whether to move from their current house. She wants to; he doesn’t.

    After the curious detour of Pete’s Dragon last year, Lowery returns to the dreamlike imagery that drove his richly rewarding Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and evokes the best of Terrence Malick. Here, the Malick comparisons may be even more apt as A Ghost Story‘s narrative is loose and abstract, with long stretches of little to no dialogue.

    Both Affleck and Mara (also Lowery’s leads from Bodies Saints) are deeply affecting, though a big part of the film’s conscience is instead revealed through the monologue of a random one-scene character. That’s fitting, for what makes this film so eerily touching is not what it tells but what it shows, and our ache for the couple comes in part from their staying out of our reach.

    Grade: A

    It Stains the Sands Red

    A couple of coked-up Vegas lowlifes, Molly (Brittany Allen) and Nick (Merwin Mondesir), are escaping the zombipocalypse to an airfield where they’ll meet with other lowlifes and head to an island off Mexico.

    Naturally, this isn’t going to work out. But what director/co-writer Colin Minihan (writing with Stuart Ortiz, formerly known collectively as The Vicious Brothers) has in store will surprise you.

    He’s made a couple of fine choices with his film. The point of view character is not only an unlikely protagonist – an unpleasant thug with a drug habit – but she’s also female.

    Soon the car goes off the road and one meathead catches her scent, and suddenly Molly’s stripper shoes are not her biggest problem as she faces a 30-mile trek across the desert to the airfield.

    What develops is an often fascinating, slow moving but relentless chase as well as a character study. With a protagonist on a perilous journey toward redemption, It Stains the Sands Red takes a structure generally reserved for the man who needs to rediscover his inner manhood and tells a very female story.

    Allen makes a great anti-heroine. Convincingly hard-knock and difficult to like, she never becomes the would-be lunch meat you root against.

    Grade: B-

    Also opening in Columbus:
    The B-Side: Elsa Dorfmans Portrait Photography (NR)
    Bronx Gothic (NR)
    The Emoji Movie (PG)

    Reviews with help from George Wolf.

    Read more from Hope at MADDWOLF, and listen to her podcasts FRIGHT CLUB and THE SCREENING ROOM.

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    Hope Madden
    Hope Maddenhttps://columbusunderground.com
    Hope Madden is a freelance contributor on Columbus Underground who covers the independent film scene, writes film reviews and previews film events.
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