Hokum
I rushed out to see the newest film from Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy. The director's last film, Oddity, was one of my favorites of 2024 and one of the most genuinely terrifying films I had seen in a while. McCarthy has a knack for building tension to the boiling point and then releasing that tension with jump scares that don't feel predictable. I just about jumped out of my skin multiple times while watching Oddity.
Hokum is perhaps not *quite* as effective or good as Oddity, but it's still incredibly solid and fun. Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, an author who travels to a hotel in rural Ireland where his parents honeymooned. Ohm is an absolutely miserable son of a bitch. He's rude, mean, and drinks too much. He also has a habit of butting into other people's business and sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. After making a connection with a hotel staff member, Fiona (Florence Ordesh), only to find out she went missing during the hotel's Halloween party, Ohm sneaks into a forbidden and cut-off part of the hotel: the honeymoon suite.
There, Ohm finds horrors beyond comprehension. I'm really holding back on the plot of Hokum so that you, dear reader, can discover it for yourself. But there are jump scares and disturbing imagery aplenty. Adam Scott is an interesting choice for a horror lead, but ultimately I enjoyed his performance. For most of the film, he comes off as unfazed by both supernatural horrors (he scoffs and says that the tales of the haunted honeymoon suite are "hokum") and natural horrors. But his tough exterior eventually breaks down and we see the deep well of pain underneath Ohm's curmudgeonly exterior. This is not unlike Scott's performance in Severance: a man repressing oceans of pain that eventually surge forth.
Hokum is one of my favorite horror combinations: scary AND cozy! I really enjoyed it and can't wait to check it out again.
Grade: A-
***
The Devil Wears Prada 2
I watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Mother's Day with my mom and my brother-in-law's mom (who is very much like an aunt to me). While I didn't expect it to be as good as the original film, I have to admit I was deeply disappointed by this movie.
First of all, it's complete fan service, which is to be expected. Most of the original characters are back, including Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), and Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci). And there are repetitions of scenes and jokes from the original. All of that would be fine if the movie itself was good or had something interesting to say. It does not.
After losing her job at a newspaper, Andy is hired to lead the features department at fashion magazine Runway. Although Miranda Priestly, the ice queen editor-in-chief of Runway, will be Andy's boss once again, Andy was actually hired by Miranda's boss, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), the owner of Runway's parent company. So Miranda and Andy are in a position to butt heads. Again.
Blah blah blah, there are these "almost" conversations the movie has about climate change and AI and sweatshops and billionaires. But The Devil Wears Prada 2 isn't interested in having these conversations for real. The movie feels completely out of touch both in the sense that we're talking about a magazine here, but also in the girl boss feminism of it all. Miranda and Andy have a conversation where Miranda says, "I just love working...don't you?" NO BITCH. WE DONT DREAM OF LABOR.
Look, it's fine to love your job or whatever, but let's face it: this movie is about wealthy, skinny, cunty people and as a society we're sick of that shit. Or, at least, I'm sick of that shit, unless it's going to genuinely make fun of these bougie shits. The original The Devil Wears Prada came out in 2006 and was the perfect film for its time and I still really love it. This movie, 20 years later, feels like something out of a time capsule and not in a good way.
Grade: C
***
WALL-E
Believe it or not, I have never seen Pixar's WALL-E before. But now that I have a 4 year old niece, I get a chance to catch up on all the kid's movies I ignored. What a delight WALL-E is! The story of a trash-collecting robot left to endlessly do his mindless tasks on a long-abandoned Earth, only to find love with EVE, a robot sent from somewhere else to scan Earth for signs of life, is a lovely and contemplative one.
I think most people find the first 30-40 minutes, which are dialogue-free, to be the highlight of the film. When EVE is taken back to her mothership, which turns out to be a giant cruise ship for the descendants of humans who left Earth when it became uninhabitable, and WALL-E follows, the movie turns into a message movie about the dangers of overconsumption. It's the kind of movie people watch now, 20 years later, and are like "Oh my god, it came true!" (similar to Idiocracy). Still, I found the second half of the movie pretty entertaining, even if it wasn't as meditative and pure as the first half.
I'm glad I watched WALL-E. I think it's considered one of the best, if not the best, Pixar films and I wasn't that blown away by it...however, I also wasn't fully watching it since I was being aggressively cuddled by my niece the whole time.
Grade: B+
***
Passenger
I've given director Andre Ovredal enough chances at this point. The Norwegian filmmaker directed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a movie I gave a rare "D" rating to, as well as The Autopsy of Jane Doe, a movie I turned off halfway through. His latest, Passenger, is the best movie I've seen by him and it's still a bit of a stinker. The premise of the film is excellent: a couple sell their house to start a new "van life", traveling across the United States with a decked out van they sleep in. But after stopping to help the victim of a car accident, an entity latches onto them and begins following and tormenting them.
This intriguing premise is wasted on a film that is poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed. Passenger isn't awful, it's just very meh. The lead actors, Jacob Scipio as Tyler and Lou Llobel as Maddie, are...fine. Melissa Leo at least brings some welcome campiness as a veteran Van Lifer who tries to warn Maddie. But Passenger takes itself too seriously to go full camp mode.
One thing that annoyed me is that the movie initially treats the entity (the titular "Passenger") as an unknowable evil and has Maddie do research into the lore behind whatever this thing is. However, near the end of the movie, Maddie and Tyler meet up with Melissa Leo's character, Diane, again and she basically explains exactly how to fight the thing. It's just very unsatisfying. And the nature of the Passenger is very Conjuring Universe-esque.
Feel free to skip this flat, uninteresting film.
Grade: C
***
Training Day
I saw Antoine Fuqua's Training Day around the time it came out, over 20 years ago. I revisited it on a majestic screen smaller than an 8x11 piece of paper while on a 6 hour flight, sitting next to a woman who refused to put the window screen down and couldn't stop coughing.
What is there to say? It's Training Day. The story of a rookie cop, Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), and a complete psycho of an experienced narcotics officer, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), who get involved in a number of life-threatening shenanigans on Jake's first day in the narcotics unit.
This is a film of its time. It's copaganda where the Good Cop (Jake) emerges with his morals and ethics in tact after being put through hell by the Bad Cop (Alonzo). Am I out of pocket to say this movie feels...racist? Or, at least, the racial politics of the film are weird. It really leans in to a lot of stereotypes of Black and Hispanic men and women. But also, I'm a white lady from the suburbs who has never been forced to smoke PCP at gunpoint like poor Jake. So what the fuck do I know?
Training Day is an entertaining film with the smiling, evil, psychotic Denzel at its center. It's kind of the perfect movie to watch on a plane since you don't really need to follow the plot of dialogue all that closely.
Grade: B
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