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    Nutty Stuff in Theaters and Streaming

    One week until traditional Memorial Day Weekend Blockbuster Mayhem (TM)! So Hollywood has a pretty low-key weekend in store for you full of breezy elegance, bold provocation, slyly relevant updates to old tropes and more. What do you want to watch? Here are our thoughts.

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    Men

    In theaters

    by Hope Madden

    Alex Garland bats 1.000 with his third feature, Men, a terrifying look at the complicated aftermath of trauma.

    Jessie Buckley (flawless, as always) plays Harper, a woman in need of some time alone. She rents a gorgeous English manor from proper country gentleman Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) and plans to recuperate from, well, a lot.

    Garland unveils Harper’s backstory little by little, each time slightly altering our perception of the film. The more about Harper we learn, the more village folk we meet: vicar, surly teen, pub owner, police officer, and a naked man in the woods. Each is played by Kinnear—or by actors sporting Kinnear’s CGI face—although Harper never mentions this, or even seems to notice.

    Is she seeing what we’re seeing?

    All is left open to interpretation. An easy read, given Kinnear’s multiple roles, is simply that all men are the same. And while each of Kinnear’s characters represents a specific and common type of male threat, as bizarre reality begins tipping further into outright fantasy, it seems likelier we are seeing more of Harper than we are of men in general. She is putting a face—the same face—on a lifetime of traumas, large and small.

    Garland’s bold visuals—so precise in Ex Machina, so surreal in Annihilation—create a sumptuous environment just bordering on overripe. The verdant greens and audacious reds cast a spell perfectly suited to the biblical and primal symbolism littering the picture.

    Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s score meshes with Garland’s lush imagery, releasing a blend of music, ambient sound and, at its most eerily beautiful moments, Buckley’s voice. The result is powerful and unnerving.

    Men is more of a head-scratcher than either of Garland’s previous films. Yes, even Annihilation. It’s far more of a horror film, for one thing, and far less of a clearly articulated narrative. Rather than clarifying or summing up, the film’s ending offers more questions than answers. But if you can make peace with ambiguity, Men is a film you will not likely forget.

    Grade: A-

    Downton Abbey: A New Era

    In theaters

    by Hope Madden

    The Crawleys exit the roaring ’20s a bit cash-strapped (can’t fix the roof but can holiday en masse, butlers in tow). Fans of the long-running series, now unleashing its second feature film, can rest easy. Heads held high, the family is ready to face a new decade with new leadership and the same old posh spirit.

    Elegant escapism of the breeziest order, Downton Abbey: A New Era follows the idle rich through the travails of trying to remain both idle and rich. Now about that attic.

    It seems a film producer hopes to shoot a movie in Downton. Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) wants no part of it, but Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is running the show now. She hates to seem common, but the fee will fix those leaks.

    Of course, the servants are thrilled to have real-life movie stars in the building. All except Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), who can’t bear to see the family stoop so low. Why, the Queen of England sat right at that table!

    Meanwhile, Lady Grantham (Maggie Smith, scene-stealing, as is her way) is surprised to have inherited a French villa from a man she knew many wistful years ago. Mysterious? Or is it scandalous?!

    So, off half the family goes to investigate, leaving Lady Mary and the servants to contend with the handsome director (Hugh Dancy), charming actor (Dominic West) and dour actress (Laura Haddock).

    The old gang has fun stretching their familiar characters a bit for the big screen, although director Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) has a tough time staging the interior conversations as anything more than expensive TV set pieces.

    Still, the expansive grounds are gorgeous and Nice is gorgeous, and it can be restful to spend a full two hours where the stakes are no higher than whether or not the world will remember granny as a tramp.

    Downton Abbey is a really well-dressed, well-acted, well-produced, uptight soap opera. Droll dialog, stunning locales and exquisite costuming elevate each scene to something more than a guilty pleasure, but the film’s sites never veer from its target audience.

    Grade: B-

    Emergency

    In theaters

    by George Wolf

    Take two longtime friends on the verge of going their separate ways, and throw in one night of epic partying before they graduate. There will be hijinks, conflict, feelings expressed and resolution.

    We know this formula, right?

    Not so fast. Expanding their Emergency short from 2018, director Carey Williams and writer K.D. Dávila run those familiar tropes through a tense, in-the-moment lens that upends convention while still delivering a consistent layer of laughter.

    Sean (RJ Cyler from Power Rangers and The Harder They Fall) and Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins, Black Box and The Underground Railroad) have two months until they graduate Buchanan college. Their plan is to make history by becoming the first Black men to complete Buchanan’s Legendary Party Tour. They’ve managed to score all seven necessary invites, but a complication arises.

    There’s a passed-out underage white girl in their living room.

    Kunle’s instinct is to call 911, but Sean quickly reminds him that Black folks have been shot for far less than what it might appear is going on.

    And so the two friends decide to deal with the situation themselves, adding their pal Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) to the plan while the unconscious girl’s sister (Sabrina Carpenter) and two of her friends stay in pursuit via phone tracking.

    Williams does a masterful job juggling tones. Early on, the terrific performances from Cyler and Watkins get us invested in the friendship before Williams increases the pressure. He’s able to blend some terrifying dread into the ridiculous nature of the situation with a quiet confidence that deepens the real-world stakes.

    Dávila, fresh off writing the Oscar-nominated short Please Hold, again mines law enforcement anxieties with deft precision. Her transition to a feature-length screenplay is seamless, sharpening the narrative with clever, organic plot turns and the characters with authentically grounded humor.

    From clueless white allies to the distance between “Black excellence” and “thug,” Emergency covers plenty of socially conscious ground. And though a beat or two may seem less than subtle, the film never panders.

    So we get the two friends ready to explore the future, searching for their place in the world. But this wild night of partying holds more sobering lessons than we’re used to seeing.

    For these young men, it’s about how quickly their perception of the world can change forever, and the unrelenting weight of navigating how the world sees them.

    Grade: A-

    Lux Æterna

    At Gateway Film Center

    by George Wolf

    For anyone who’s still wary of the Gaspar Noé sensory assault in full feature length form, Lux Æterna offers a slight variation.

    Oh, he’s still beating us about the face and neck with psychedelic imaging, pulsating rhythms and immersive colors, he’s just keeping it to under an hour this time. And, even bringing along a dare-I-say lighthearted touch to this meta mashup of cinema and witchcraft.

    Most everyone here is playing themselves, starting right at the top with Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg talking shop. They swap stories, laugh heartily at their “shit films” and eventually get down to the business of making “God’s Work,” a post-modern tale of witches.

    Dalle is directing, Gainsbourg is starring, and once on set, the laughter gives way to a cascade of madness and hysterics, rendered even more disorienting by Noé’s consistent use of split screen formatics. Not only is following both sides often challenging, but anyone sensitive to flashing lights might well be overwhelmed.

    The “God’s Work” producer is hatching a plan to get Dalle fired from the project. Gainsbourg is juggling trouble at home and unsolicited pitches from an aspiring director (Karl Glusman from Noé’s Love), while her female co-stars (including Abbey Lee and Clara Deshayes) face a string of indignities.

    Noé intersperses it all with clips and quotes from films and filmmakers he admires, and when a lighting miscue becomes a flashpoint for total chaos on the production, Noé’s embrace of the breakdown is clear.

    This is where his art thrives, and Lux Æterna finds Noé nearly winking at his own reputation. Longtime aficionados may feel a bit slighted, but any neophytes will get a healthy appetizer to help decide if you’re up for bigger portions.

    Grade: B+

    Torn Hearts

    On VOD

    by Hope Madden

    Heartbreak, hardship, hard living and broken dreams — that sounds like a country song.

    How well does it work for a horror movie? Director Brea Grant (12 Hour Shift) finds out, with an assist from effortless badass Katey Sagal in the Music City thriller Torn Hearts.

    Sagal plays Harper Dutchess, country music legend and what remains of the Dutchess sisters, a duo that made it big in the ’90s, before tragedy hit. Now a recluse in her Nashville mansion, Harper is none too happy to see upstarts Jordan (Abby Quinn) and Leigh (Alexxis Lemire) show up at her door hoping to record a song with her that will put them on the path to stardom.

    Screenwriter Rachel Koller Croft stumbled into something fresh with the country music angle. Horror is no stranger to rock music, disco, techno, metal, punk, but country? That’s new.

    Unfortunately, she repackages a lot of familiar ideas inside that Western fringe. But Grant finds ways to keep things interesting.

    An authentic soundtrack of music penned by Brittany Allen grounds Torn Hearts in authenticity, while Yaron Levy’s cinematography works the creepy Dutchess mansion for all its gothic, garish Nashville weirdness.

    Both Lemire and Quinn fit their roles well. As Harper picks away at the young duo’s insecurities, each performer gets the chance to show some range, both physically and emotionally.

    Sagal steals the show, though. The picture of hard living, Harper manipulates the young musicians with sometimes sadistic ease. Sagal relishes the contempt, crafting a formidable central figure and ensuring rapt attention, no matter what weaknesses the film has in store.

    Torn Hearts layers its somewhat rote plot points with context about the harsh misogyny of country music, points Sagal’s performance drives home.

    Grade: B-

    Follow George, Hope and Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin for a week in movie reviews and news on THE SCREENING ROOM podcast.

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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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