Ladies Night

Movie: Girls Trip

Girls Trip, directed by Malcolm D. Lee, is one of those movies where you miss chunks of dialogue because you're laughing so hard at the last line. You leave the theatre with a pain in your side from laughing constantly for nearly two hours. It also has a message at the center the feels organic and truthful. I can't help comparing Girls Trip to one of my all-time favorite comedies, Bridesmaids. Although the two films are quite different in tone (and, uh, skin tone since Bridesmaids has primarily white actors and Girls Trip primarily black...more on this in a minute), they both have a similar heart--they are intensely raunchy films that also manage to feel elegant and honest.

Girls Trip follows a group of college friends who, despite their insanely busy lives as grown women, reunite to attend the Essence Fest in New Orleans. The leader of the pack is Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), a wildly successful author whose latest book about her marriage and career, titled You Can Have It All, is the reason the ladies are headed to NOLA. Ryan is one of the speakers at the event. As you can probably guess from the title of her book, Ryan's life is, in fact, not perfect and her marriage seems ready to implode at any moment. Her husband, Stewart (Mike Colter of Luke Cage) is a stone-cold fox but is unfaithful, and when a picture emerges online of him canoodling with a social media star, Simone (Deborah Ayorinde), Ryan's girlfriends are ready to tear him apart and build her up.

There's Sasha (Queen Latifah), who runs a gossip website and is the first to learn of the scandalous photo that threatens to unravel everything Ryan has worked for. There's Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith), a divorced mom who, with a little help from her friends, is encouraged to go wild in NOLA. And there's Dina (Tiffany Haddish), who steals the show as the sexually outrageous firecracker who shows the girls a sex trick called "grape fruiting" that will change the way you see the fruit forever.

The plot is pretty typical of a "gal pals gone wild" movie--in NOLA, hijinks abound involving drugs, drinks, men, and--in the most memorable scene--a zip line.

Beyond the actual film itself, seeing Girls Trip was a unique experience for me because for probably the first time ever I was a minority in a mostly black audience. It made me realize how "white" my moviegoing choices are (Manchester by the Sea, anyone?) and just how white most movies in general are. I live in Richmond, VA for god's sake! It's a really diverse town. But with the exception of seeing Get Out earlier this year, where the audience was about 50/50 black and white, I have never been to a movie where POC outnumber whites.

As with most comedies and horror movies, seeing the film in the theatre with a large, enthusiastic audience is half the point. Comedies are funnier with the people around you are laughing hysterically and horror movies scarier when everyone else is screaming and jumping out of their seats. The audience of Girls Trip definitely added a lot to the experience.

A couple quibbles I had with the movie that keep me from giving it a higher rating: it was definitely formulaic, down to the categorization of the friends. There's the prudish one, the slutty one, the leader and the second banana to the leader. Not unlike Sex and the City which brought us all the lovely shorthand of being able to say "You're such a Samantha".

But the biggest problem I had was that of the "other woman" trope. The plot revolves around Ryan's husband cheating on her with a woman named Simone. While the ladies of Girls Trip give Stewart (Ryan's husband) a lot of grief, they also take every opportunity to shit on Simone. This is the fault, I think, of the writers of the film who take the easy way out in creating a villain. Simone is written as a complete bitch who shows up to Essence Fest and rubs the fact that she's sleeping with Stewart in Ryan's face. I found it to be over-the-top and phony. When you have a movie about the importance and sacredness of female friendship, do you really need to have a female character you can call a ho at every turn?

Other than those quibbles, Girls Trip was a lot of fun and, at the risk of "woke-signaling", it was awesome to be able to support a movie with four amazing women of color as the leads with my money and time. In fact, it was easy, since it was so much fun.

Grade: B

Night Terrors

Movies: It Comes at Night, The Eyes of My Mother, XX, The Devil's Candy

If you know me, you know I love horror movies! Let's jump right in:

It Comes at Night

This atmospheric, psychological horror film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, caused a number of people to walk out of the theatre I saw it in. Not because of over-the-top gore, but because of unmet expectations.

It Comes at Night was marketed as a straightforward horror movie that takes place in the aftermath of a epidemic that kills off a large portion of the population. Survivalist Paul (Joel Edgerton, amazing and edgy), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and his son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) live in their rustic home, deep in the woods and literally barricaded so that there is only one exit and the door is locked at night: no one goes out and no one comes in after dark.

But one day, Paul catches a man, Will (Christopher Abbott), trying to break in. After beating the shit out of the him and tying him to a tree all night to make sure he doesn't have the disease that killed off most of the outside world, Paul interrogates Will and finds out he has a wife and a young son--he was looking for water and was desperate. After some negotiations, Paul allows Will and family to move in as long as the follow the rules.

Without giving anything away, this arrangement crumbles pretty quickly.

It Comes at Night seems to be about monsters in the woods and diseases, but it's really about paranoia and the horrific actions people will take to protect "their own". It's also about masculine hubris. Macho Paul thinks he has things under control--he is the king of his home and no one challenges him. But ultimately, the tighter he clenches his fist, the more quickly he loses control. People walked out of this movie because they thought the bought a ticket to see the next Blair Witch or 28 Days Later, and what they got was a movie about the horrors of the human heart.

Grade: B

***

The Eyes of My Mother

The freshman effort of director Nicolas Pesce is a beautiful and sickening black and white film about Francisca, a young woman who lives on an isolated farm and learns to slaughter and dissect cows from her surgeon mother. When a stranger shows up at Francisca's door while her father is away and asks to use the phone, we know things will not turn out well.

With the know-how to surgically remove eyeballs and vocal cords, and a complete lack of empathy or a conscience, Francisca pirouettes deftly from potential prey to sadistic predator. The film skips ahead in time so that we see Francisca attempting to remedy her isolation in terrifying and disgusting ways.

I won't say more, except that this movie is likely only to be enjoyed by fans of super-indie horror who have strong stomachs. It's not as bad as, say, Hostel in terms of explicit violence, but it's in many ways more disturbing.

Grade: B-

***

XX

I should have loved this horror anthology composed of four short films, all directed by women, but alas it only whetted my appetite without fully satisfying. The women who directed these films were given no theme, but three of them focus on motherhood and specifically on women who lose control of their children/lives in horrific (and sometimes funny) ways.

My favorite of the films, which many critics deemed the weakest of the four, is "The Box", directed by Jovanka Vuckovic. It has an incredible simple premise--a boy sees a man on the subway carrying a box. He asks to see what's inside it. Whatever he sees causes him to stop eating, and no matter what his mother does--cooks his favorite foods, takes him to the doctor, cajoles, punishes, begs--nothing keeps him from wasting away. It's an elegant and disturbing short story.

The other films didn't really do it for me, at least in their short-feature length. But if you like horror, and especially horror directed by women, XX is worth checking out.

Grade: C+

***

The Devil's Candy

This quirky film is about a family of artists who move into a suspiciously cheap home where two deaths have taken place. Dad Jesse (Ethan Embry) is a long-haired artist who loves death metal. Mom Astrid (Shiri Appleby) is a hairdresser and laid-back "cool mom" type. Young teen Zooey (Kiara Glasco) is a natural born misfit who worships her dad and longs for a sweet-ass guitar that she can learn to play metal on.

Turns out, the deaths that occurred in the home were not so innocent (are they ever, in these types of movies?) -- the little old lady who lived in the home did not, in fact, fall down the stairs, but was pushed by her mentally unstable son who was hearing voices telling him to kill...kill...KILL. And that man is still on the loose, still hearing voices, and still collecting children (the "devil's candy") to murder...and once he sees young Zooey, he realizes that she's "the sweetest candy" of all (ick).

The Devil's Candy is over-the-top, ridiculous, and a lot of fun. The climatic scene is incredibly unrealistic in the way that makes you scream at the screen "No one could survive ALL THAT!"

I can't really recommend the movie, but I can't NOT recommend it either. If you like death metal, demonic voices, and children getting hacked to bits, you will probably enjoy it! :D

Grade: B-

Metal as fuk