Girls Chase Boys and Boys Chase Girls

Two movies about gender and violence...

Spoiler warnings for entire review.

Blink Twice

Blink Twice, directed by actress Zoe Kravitz in her directorial debut, is the first movie I've seen that comes with a trigger warning before it begins. And not a "flashing lights" warning, which I've seen at the start of another movie, but a content warning. Specifically, a content warning for sexual assault. 

The film follows Frida (Naomi Ackie), a waitress who, along with her roommate and best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), works the reception for an event held by tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum). Frida has a huge crush on Slater, in spite of the fact that Slater has been accused of some unspecified "inappropriate behavior" of the "Me Too" variety, which forced him to step down as CEO of his own company. In order to "heal" and "learn" from this experience, Slater...bought a private island. He also goes to therapy! But mostly he throws parties on the private island.

After catching Frida's eye and flirting with her the entire night, Slater invites her and Jess to the island along with his group of friends which include aspiring tech moguls, D-list celebrities, and various hangers-on. Frida and Jess jump at the chance to party on a billionaire's private island, so they say yes and hop on Slater's jet.

Once on the island, they find that it was totally cool that they didn't pack anything because there are clothes and toiletries provided for them. However, they are asked to give up their phones. But Slater assures them "you won't have to do anything you don't want to do". Sure, buddy.

What follows is an absolute orgy of drugs, drinks, pool-lounging, and haute cuisine. Slater has an army of people working on the island, including landscapers, cooks, security, and cleaners. The days and nights pass by in a blur to the point where Jess and Frida don't even know what day it is...and they don't really care. Or do they? 

Jess confides in Frida that something feels wrong, but she just can't put her finger on what. It feels like she's forgetting something. Or more like everyone is forgetting something. She wants to go home. Frida tries to console her, but Frida is really starting to like Slater and they're spending a lot of time together on the island...she doesn't want to leave.

The next morning, Jess is gone. And no one remembers her except for Frida who promptly starts freaking out. One of the other women, Sarah (Adria Arjona), comes by Frida's room with Jess's lighter, the one everyone has been sharing during the entire trip. The name "Jess" is written on it. Sarah points to a bruise she has that she can't explain. Frida says that every morning she wakes up and there is dirt under her fingernails but she doesn't know why. They realize that something horrible is happening on the island and somehow they don't remember it.

It's rape, you guys. The men rape the women every night. And they use this perfume made of flowers that are cultivated on the island to erase the women's memories. In flashbacks we see some pretty graphic depictions of the men chasing down the women, tying them to various pieces of furniture in the house, and raping them while they scream and cry. So, yeah, that trigger warning was a good idea!

So how do the ladies end up remembering these events? Snake venom, obviously! There are snakes on the island and if you drink their venom or get bitten by one it reverses the effects of the perfume. Jess got bitten by a snake the night she had her freakout and so Slater murders her since she won't be able to forget all the...rape. 

So....ok, here's the thing. The whole perfume for forgetting/snake venom for remembering shit is not necessary and is really confusing. It leads to a bunch of questions about how exactly it would work. It's really dumb, in my opinion. It's unneeded. Slater King is a tech mogul billionaire. He could just create a designer roofie to slip the women every night that would have the same effect. I feel that the whole perfume/venom stuff took away from the movie big time, especially since so much time was spent on figuring it all out. Like...why? The time spent on Frida and Sarah discovering HOW Slater is doing this could have been spent on character and plot development. 

Blink Twice is a rape-revenge movie and I love rape-revenge movies. Sure enough, there is a reckoning when all the women, after doing snake venom-infused tequila shots, remember what the men do to them every night and...well, they try to murder all the men but it doesn't quite work and the only women left alive at the end of the night are Sarah and Frida. For a rape-revenge movie, Blink Twice kinda disappoints when it comes to the revenge. Yes, a bunch of the men die. It's basically a bloodbath which culminates in Slater's mansion burning to the ground. But it doesn't really feel like justice. It just feels sloppy and anti-climatic.

I think there were some good ideas in this movie, but ultimately Kravitz goes in for too much style and not enough substance. It seems that Kravitz intended Blink Twice to be both a fun thriller but also a message movie about abuse of power, and it doesn't fully succeed as either. It's too upsetting and intense to be a fun thriller, but it's too...goofy with the perfume/venom shit to be serious. 

I will say that the ensemble cast, which includes (besides Ackie, Shawkat, Tatum, and Arjona) Simon Rex, Geena Davis, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, and Kyle MacLachlan, is great. These are are phenomenal actors (and all very funny, too) and they work well together. There's a lot to enjoy about Blink Twice even if it's a bit disappointing in the end.

Grade: B

***

Strange Darling

I didn't know about Strange Darling until about a week ago and all I heard was "it's great" and "don't read anything about it. Go in cold". So I did! And while it has some flaws, I'd say overall it was a really fun experience.

If you think you might want to see it, stop reading now and go see it! This review will give the entire plot away.

The film, which stars Willa Fitzgerald as "The Lady" and Kyle Gallner as "The Demon", is presented in six chapters, starting with chapter 3, titled "Somebody Please Help Me". It opens on the Lady running desperately through a field trying to avoid the Demon, who is chasing her with a rifle. They end up in a car chase that results in the Lady crashing her car and running into the woods. She stumbles across and house and begs to be let inside.

As the movie progresses, we start to put the plot together. The woman and the man (I can't just keep calling them the Lady and the Demon, because that sounds fucking weird) meet in a bar, drive to a motel, and discuss getting a room. The woman straight up asks the man if he's a serial killer (he says he is not) and says that men have no idea the risks women take to "have a little fun". After he assures her that he's not going to kill her, she reveals what she wants him to do to her and we cut to him choking her while she's handcuffed to the bed. She keeps begging him to choke her harder and harder and finally tells him to stop out of frustration. "This isn't working" she says. "It was your idea" he says. After she insults him a bit more, he recuffs her to the bed and slaps her, and genuinely chokes her and berates her. She begs him to stop, but he tells her she asked for this and she tearfully agrees...

...before saying the safeword, "Mister Snuffleupagus". He stops and unties her, comforting her while she cries. After recovering a bit, she asks if he wants to do coke with her. "It makes me very horny" she says and he reluctantly agrees. After they do their bumps, she begins acting cold and rude to him again, pissing him off. But when he says "coke doesn't seem to make you horny, it just puts you in a bad mood", she reveals that while indeed she did coke, what he took (from a separate bottle she hid from him) is ketamine...and he's about to fall deep into that k-hole, baby!

Well, it turns out that little Miss Snuffleupagus is a serial killer known as "The Electric Lady". We don't know all the details except that she favors using a knife and a taser to torture her victims. She spends some time carving her initials into his chest and torturing him and then goes to stab him in the throat, but he happens to have a gun hidden in his ankle holster and he shoots her ear off with it. She runs out of the room, steals a car, and the chase is on. Oh, by the way, the guy is a cop. Not that it saves him in the end. 

Strange Darling owes a lot to the movies of Quentin Tarantino. The out of order plot, the ultraviolence, the retro feel of the movie--all markers of Tarantino. And the way Tarantino approaches female characters is mirrored in Strange Darling as well. Basically, exploitative sexism dressed up as feminism (don't get me wrong, I love Tarantino movies, but they are very much NOT feminist movies, even when they feature kickass women). Similarly, Strange Darling shows the ways in which people can be easily fooled by feminine wiles. Our Electric Lady here is a psychopath...she is able to manipulate the various people she encounters using sex appeal or tears depending on what she wants and who the "mark" is. Willa Fitzgerald is a revelation in this movie. Her performance is genuinely unnerving. We watch her turn on the tears and beg for help, only to cut the throat of the people who help her minutes later.

There's one scene that brings the movie down from an A to an B+ for me. When the already very clear message about how easy it is for this woman to get people to underestimate her is made so explicit and on the nose, that it felt like we got dropped into a Daily Wire movie for a minute. The man is able to handcuff the woman to a chest freezer after overpowering her. He calls for backup. She is able to grab him and bite his jugular and he bleeds out. When the cops arrive, she is whimpering and has pulled her pants down. A young, female cop looks at the scene and assumes that the man she killed was trying to rape her. The older, male cop points out that they don't know what happened and need to call for more backup. The young, female cop says "Just because I have a VAGINA doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing!" 

Well, of course, after they uncuff her and put her in the squad car, she ends up holding them at gunpoint because she grabbed the gun off the guy she killed. Turns out the dumb lady cop was wrong and the older male cop was right!! Who would have thunk it? It's a really tone deaf scene that feels like it would make sense in a conservative movie making fun of those wacky liberals and feminists who just assume that all women are victims and all men are rapists! It really made me wonder about what director JT Mollner intended to say here. Because it sounds like he's saying "feminists are stupid and gullible". 

So yeah, that scene aside, Strange Darling is a pretty fun and unique film. It's unhinged, it's perverse, it's sleazy, and it's a wild-ass ride. Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald are great as the leads. Strange Darling kept me guessing throughout the movie...although now that I know all the plot twists I'm not sure it would be a fun movie to revisit. 

Grade: B+

Meh Horror Summer

Last summer, I was surprised at how underwhelmed I was with three extremely hyped movies: Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Don't get me wrong--none of these films were bad. But I expected them to be great and then thought they were just ok. Having rewatched both Barbie and Oppenheimer (I don't think I'll bother rewatching the 206 minute Killers of the Flower Moon for a while)...I stand by my initial underwhelmed-ness. Both of those films have their charms and their moments, but overall I find them just ok. "B" movies on my rating scale, which means not bad but not great.

This summer I am facing a similar situation with my most anticipated horror movies. I've already reviewed MaXXXine and Longlegs, neither of which are "bad", but also neither of which are particularly good. MaXXXine was the third in a trilogy where the first two movies I thought were wonderful. To have the trilogy end on a dud is pretty disappointing. And Longlegs had brilliant marketing, leading many viewers to believe the claims that is was going to be incredibly disturbing and terrifying. It had some jump scenes for the history books, but that doesn't translate into "a great movie" for me.

In this review I have two more disappointing horror/thrillers as well as a horror movie that surprised me. I think it's important to keep in mind that horror is very personal. Not just in the sense that different things scare different people, but also that the circumstances under which you watch a movie and the headspace you're in can really impact how you feel about a movie. 

***

Cuckoo

Hunter Schafer is one of the breakout stars of the, er, problematic (yet addictive) show Euphoria. I was excited to see that she would be the lead actress in what appeared to be (going by the preview) a truly terrifying and bonkers horror movie. Directed by Tilman Singer and also starring Dan Stevens, Cuckoo is about a family that moves to a resort town in the Bavarian Alps for the summer. Gretchen (Schafer) is the extremely moody eldest daughter who is grieving the death of her mother. After her mother's death, she was forced to move to England to live with her dad, Luis (Martin Csokas), stepmom Beth (Jessica Fenwick), and stepsister Alma (Mila Lieu). And now she's being forced to spend the summer in a boring resort town while her parents help design the new hotel for Mr. Konig (Dan Stevens, putting his bilingualism to good use playing the very creepy Herr Konig). 

Basically, creepy shit starts going down from day one. Konig gives Gretchen a job at the reception desk of the main hotel (the resort consists of a hotel with little bungalows nearby) and people randomly come in and throw up at night. Alma starts having seizures, which take Luis and Beth's full attention, leaving Gretchen to her own devices. When she is chased by a terrifying woman while she rides her bike home after a late night shift at the hotel, she realizes that something very bad is happening at the resort.

And you'll never guess what it is because it's so batshit insane that I really couldn't take Cuckoo seriously. The movie feels very incoherent and half-baked. The acting and cinematography are excellent, but they cannot make up for a plot that feels both silly and stupid. By the end of the movie, I was thinking "When will this be over? I want this movie to be over." which is not what you want to feel when watching a movie! 

I was reminded of the movie A Cure for Wellness while watching Cuckoo, which is similar in that there is a kernel of a really interesting idea buried deep in the movie, but the execution is just bad. It's almost more disappointing to watch a film that has unrecognized potential than a movie that is just plain bad. I'll bump up Cuckoo's grade for the above-mentioned acting and cinematography, as well as some truly terrifying imagery, but overall this is one to skip.

Grade: C+

***

Trap

M. Night Shyamalan is a divisive filmmaker and more often than not I find myself on the "yeah, no" side with regards to his films. In my mind, he made one truly great film (The Sixth Sense), a bunch of mid-level films, and some absolute stinkers. Having only seen six of his movies, I'm not the best judge of his overall oeuvre, but I'd say that Trap falls somewhere in the middle.

More of a thriller than a horror film, the main "twist" of Trap isn't a twist at all since the marketing revealed the premise of the film: Cooper (Josh Hartnett), takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert. Upon seeing the huge numbers of police at the concert, Cooper asks a guy selling merchandise what's going on. The guy says that the police know that an infamous serial killer, the Butcher, is at this concert and so they've set a trap for him. They'll be detaining every male leaving the concert until they catch the guy. Problem is, Cooper is the Butcher.

So the rest of the movie is "How is Cooper gonna get out of this?". Well, and also a lot of time spent lingering on the concert of fictional pop singer Lady Raven, played by...M. Night Shyamalan's daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan. And I'm not going to lie: she's a pretty good pop singer! But also, this is really taking the nepo baby thing to the next level.

In any case, Trap has the two things you can always expect in a Shyamalan movie: crazy plot twists and schmaltzy pap. I've called Shyamalan a "hack" before, and I'm not sure if that's fair. I think he is actually a decent director whose directorial style and values as a storyteller are just not for me. The guy wants to direct movies about horrific things but he is unwilling to go all the way to the dark side. And because of this unwillingness to get dark and dirty, his movies come off as phony and cheesy (to me). In the case of Trap it's the fact that this so-called "Butcher" seems like a real stand-up guy for a serial killer. The way he kills people, or at least the specific victim he has hidden away in a basement somewhere at the time of the concert, is the most humane and non-painful way to kill someone. Also, he's a good father and he has Mommy issues, which water down his inherent evil.

I hate shit like this. The Butcher supposedly has killed 12 people at the time of the concert. If you kill 12 people in cold blood, you're a psychopath. It doesn't matter if Mommy didn't love you enough. Something is wrong with your brain if you kill 12 people. So don't give me this "serial killer with a heart of gold" bullshit. They tried to do the same thing with the show Dexter and I couldn't buy it: there is no such thing as a "moral" serial killer. But in M. Night's wholesome worldview, even serial killers aren't that bad. M. Night is a soft director and that softness is too soft for me. 

Credit where credit is due, though: Josh Hartnett is great in this movie,

Grade: C

***

In a Violent Nature

Directed by Chris Nash, In a Violent Nature was a pleasant surprise. It's meditative, ambient, and slow. The killer, Johnny (Ry Barrett), is awakened from death by a some 20-somethings who take a locket from a fire tower where Johnny is buried. This was Johnny's mother's necklace, so he awakens and goes on a killing spree. A lot of the movie, which follows Johnny's perspective, is just him tromping through the woods. It's the most relaxing slasher you'll ever watch. Filled with the crunching of leaves underfoot and birdsong, a significant portion of In a Violent Nature feels like an ASMR video. Only peppered with insanely violent murders.

I watched this movie with a friend and there was one kill in particular (IYKYK) where we exclaimed, "whoa. Whoa!! WHOA!!!" as we watched--just absolutely disgusting, graphic, and probably impossible to actually do to a human body. 

There's not much else to say about In a Violent Nature. It's not a movie with a ton of symbolism or a deeper meaning. It's just an undead guy killing a bunch of annoying 20-somethings in the woods. Simple and surprisingly satisfying.

Grade: B+

I Saw the TV Glow

Spoiler warning for entire review.

Director Jane Schoenbrun's film I Saw the TV Glow is, in a word, captivating. I was nervous I wouldn't like it because I didn't care for Schoenbrun's previous film, We're All Going to the World's Fair, which I found incredibly boring. While I Saw the TV Glow is slow and meditative, it isn't boring (in my opinion). It's deeply emotional, devastating, and gut-wrenching.

In 1996, Owen (played by Ian Foreman as a 7th grader and by Justice Smith as a 9th grader and beyond) is a lonely kid who meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), an older girl who is obsessed with a TV show called The Pink Opaque, which airs at 10:30pm on Saturdays. Owen isn't allowed to stay up that late, so Maddy encourages him to lie to his mom about going to a sleepover and instead come over to her place to watch.

Two years later, Owen and Maddy aren't quite friends, but Maddy records video tapes of The Pink Opaque and gives them to Owen since, despite being a 9th grader now, he still isn't allowed to stay up and watch the show. While Owen is fascinated by the show, which features two teen girls--Isabelle and Tara--who communicate psychically and fight off monsters sent by the big bad, "Mr. Melancholy", Maddy is obsessed with it. She says that it seems like the show is more real than real life. Maddy also hates the small town she and Owen live in and tries to convince Owen to run away with her, but Owen chickens out the night they're supposed to go.

Not long after, Maddy disappears without a trace...and The Pink Opaque is canceled after a cliffhanger of a season finale in which the evil Mr. Melancholy buries Tara and Isabelle alive. 

Eight years later, Owen's mom has passed away from cancer. He lives with his deeply unfriendly dad (played by Fred Durst!) and works at a movie theatre. Owen leads a life of quiet desperation and Justice Smith plays him so well, with big eyes that seem both empty and filled with sadness. 

Maddy suddenly appears one day and while Owen is initially overjoyed to reunite with her, he quickly becomes concerned when Maddy tells him that The Pink Opaque is real and that after years of trying to live a normal life and feeling like time was slipping away, Maddy paid a coworker to bury her alive and she woke up in the show. She is Tara and Owen is Isabelle. What's more, the show ended with Isabelle also buried and alive and she's running out of oxygen. Maddy wants to bury Owen alive in this world so that he'll wake up as his true self, Isabelle, and he and Maddy/Tara can continue to show and battle Mr. Melancholy.

Maddy almost convinces Owen to go through with it, but he pushes her down and runs away, never to see her again. Decades later, Owen is a grown man with a family of his own, working at the "Fun Center" (basically a Dave & Busters), with crippling asthma and and even sadder look in his eye. During a kid's birthday party at the Fun Center, he freaks out, screaming that he is dying and calling for his mommy, while everyone around him freezes in place and doesn't hear him. In the bathroom, he tears his belly open with a box cutter to find a glowing TV inside. Owen doesn't die, he simply leaves the bathroom and apologizes to the partygoers, who don't even acknowledge his existence. This is where the movie ends.

So what is I Saw the TV Glow about? Well, it's most clearly a metaphor for being transgender. According to Maddy, Owen is "really" Isabelle. There's even a scene, remembered in flashbacks, where he dresses as Isabelle--in a pink dress--and Maddy dresses as Tara. His unsupportive dad remarks that The Pink Opaque is a show "for girls". And by denying who he truly is, Owen leads a sad life that never feels really real. He also makes a comment to the effect of, "If I don't think about it, it's not real". 

Schoenbrun is nonbinary and queer, and I Saw the TV Glow just feels very, very queer. But I think that straight, cisgender people can relate to it too because it's also about growing up and growing into someone you didn't think you'd be. Not living true to yourself and wondering what could have been. It's also about nostalgia. As an adult, Owen rewatches The Pink Opaque and finds it ridiculously juvenile and even embarrassing. Who among us hasn't gone back and watched a favorite childhood movie or show and realized that it...wasn't good. Or feels much "younger" than it felt when we were kids? 

But the thing about nostalgia is that it can be a tool for us to see how far we've come and how much we've matured. Personally, I don't deify my childhood at all. I didn't have a bad childhood, but I feel much more "me" as an adult. Aging suits me. Watching childhood faves makes me feel warm and fuzzy, not sad. I Saw the TV Glow has a much darker view of nostalgia. It suggests that maybe some of us were our truest selves when we were kids before, you know, life got to us. For Owen and Maddy, The Pink Opaque represents adventure, purpose, and true friendship whereas real life served up disappointment, conformity, and settling for something you tell yourself is happiness. Maddy chose a life of adventure, Owen chose to settle for less and lie to himself everyday, and now it's literally killing him. Suffocating him, as his alter ego suffocates in her shallow grave within The Pink Opaque.

Whether you feel the trans metaphor or the "life of quiet desperation" metaphor more, I Saw the TV Glow will devastate you in the end, and a lot of that has to do with the deeply embodied performance by Justice Smith. He doesn't not have to overact to express how the years of denial, repression, and boredom have turned him into a shadow by the end of the movie. I felt that achy-hot feeling behind my eyes in the last scene, wanting to cry for poor Owen. I Saw the TV Glow is a movie that aches. 

I'm so glad I gave this movie a chance. It's one of my favorites of the year so far, though I don't know if it will be an easily rewatchable film. But it is fascinating and deeply moving piece of art and I'll definitely be looking out for Schoenbrun's next film.

Grade: A

Longlegs

Director Oz Perkins has been carving a nice little space for himself within the horror genre. Longlegs is his fourth feature film and definitely the one that will put him on the map as a horror director. I've seen one of his other movies--The Blackcoat's Daughter--and thought it was good, but unrelentingly bleak. Longlegs is scarier, funnier, and wilder than Blackcoat, but still taps into the overwhelming sense of dread that pervaded Blackcoat.

That said, Perkins is still rough around the edges. Longlegs is a good movie, and VERY scary...but the plot is a little all over the place and the movie feels more like a collection of scary ideas and images than a cohesive, well-crafted story.

I will go into full spoilers and plot description for those who like to read about scary movies with no intention of seeing them. For those who don't want to be spoiled--go see the movie! It's worth the price of admission, even if it's not perfect. Just make sure to empty your bladder beforehand so you don't mess up the theatre seats.

Longlegs primarily takes place in the 1990s. Actress Maika Monroe plays Special Agent Lee Harker (can't help but think of Dracula character Jonathan Harker), a young and green agent in a male dominated field. Feels very Clarice Starling, right? That's because Perkins was heavily inspired by The Silence of the Lambs...at least in the first half of the movie.

Lee impresses her boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) by showing some signs of...mild psychic abilities? She is able to point out a house where a killer is hiding out on one of her first assignments. She just knows he's there. They do a test where Lee is asked to guess a random number between 0 and 100, and she guesses correctly 8 times out of 16. Thus, she is jokingly deemed "half psychic" by Carter. 

Carter puts Lee on the case of a serial killer who has been active for decades. His MO is that he targets families with a daughter born one the 14th of a month and somehow compels the fathers to kill their wives and daughters. He leaves behind letters written in a code and signed "Longlegs".

(PS: Lee Harker's birthday is January 14th. Same as my dad's! Capricorns RISE UP).

After reviewing the case file, Lee points out some fairly obvious things, namely that there is never any evidence to suggest forced entry or that anyone else is laying a finger on these families. It's possible that Longlegs is never even in the house when the murders take place. But maybe someone else is? Someone the families trust enough to let in?

Lee gets an assist from Longlegs himself, who visits her isolated house in the middle of the woods in one of the scariest scenes. When Lee goes outside to investigate a noise, someone is seen inside her home. She discovers that Longlegs left her a birthday card and a key to the code, which helps her decode all his previous letters. This leads Lee and Carter to the home of the Camera family, where a murder took place, but the daughter, Carrie Ann Camera, was at school and thus survived the massacre. 

First, they investigate the family barn, discovering a VERY CREEPY life size doll modeled after the young Carrie Ann. It even has human hair on its head. When dissected, it's revealed that there is a strange metal ball inside the doll's head. Lee spoints out to the skeptical Carter that in some cultures dolls are used in magical practices. Carter doesn't think magic has anything to do with anything.

They visit Carrie Ann (played by Kiernan Shipka) in the mental hospital where she's lived since the massacre of her family. Apparently, she had a visitor just the day before who signed in under Lee Harker's name. Since that visitor, Carrie Ann came out of years of catatonia and is now speaking again. She says a lot of weird shit to Lee, like that if "the man downstairs" told her to throw herself out a window, she'd be "pleased as peaches" to do so. Obviously, the visitor was Longlegs, and obviously he is exerting some kind of mind control on Carrie Ann.

Meanwhile, Perkins occasionally cuts to scenes with Longlegs, played by Nicolas Cage in heavy makeup. Longlegs as a character is truly unnerving. He looks WEIRD, he talks weird, he's just very weird. Which makes scenes with his character both funny and deeply disturbing. 

At some point in all this, Carter shows Lee that her own mother made a phone call to the cops to report a trespasser in 1974, one day before Lee's 9th birthday. Carter thinks the trespasser may have been Longlegs himself. Lee visits her mother, Ruth (played by Alicia Witt), who is a deeply strange woman with vacant eyes and a dreamy quality. When Lee asks Ruth straight out what happened on her 9th birthday, Ruth just says "No" and refuses to engage. But she does tell Lee that she kept all Lee's stuff in her childhood bedroom. Lee discovers a box of polaroids, and in the biggest jump scare in the movie, it is revealed that Lee herself took a picture of Longlegs. Seeing him, Lee just knows that this is the guy. 

Shortly after, they arrest Longlegs, whose real name is Dale Cobble and who appears to be a raving lunatic who worships Satan. Lee questions Longlegs who speaks to her in riddles (mixed with song lyrics), and pretty much straight up reveals the plot. After he speaks to her about "the man downstairs" and "the seventh she, who was given the same choice as all the rest--crimson or clover"...he states that his work is done and then proceeds to bang his own head on the table until he dies.

Carter is furious because he believes that Longlegs wasn't using any kind of magic or witchcraft, though he did have an accomplice, and that now he is dead they'll never find out who it was. He tells Lee to go back to her mother, who might have seen the accomplice.

Fans of horror movies...do you see where this is going?

Lee and another agent, Agent Browning, go back to Ruth's home. While Lee is inside, trying to find her mother, she hears a gunshot. She sees her own mother, dressed in a nun's habit, shooting Browing at point-blank range. When Lee run's outside to confront Ruth, Ruth is standing in front of a life size doll of young Lee. She shoots it in the head, and we see a black cloud leave Lee's head. 

Then there is an exposition dump, told by Ruth to Lee and narrated like a fairytale ("Once upon a time, a little girl lived with her mother..."). Ruth explains how on Lee's 9th birthday, Longlegs came to murder them, but Ruth begged him to spare Lee's life and agreed to be his accomplice. Longlegs was a dollmaker who made super realistic dolls of little girls and put a metallic ball in each doll's head that were infused with...the power of SATAN! Ruth would visit the homes of the families marked for death and deliver the doll as "a gift from the church". Once the doll was inside, it would influence the father to kill their families. Ruth had to watch to make sure everything happened the way it was meant to. It destroyed her inside, but this was the choice she made to protect Lee. 

Oh, by the way, Longlegs lived in Lee and Ruth's basement the entire time...this is where he made the dolls. The reason Lee didn't know is because she had her own doll that "told her where to look and what not to see", so she had no idea a man was living downstairs. 

Lee wakes up to a telephone ringing in her mother's house. Upon answering it, a voice reminds her of Ruby Carter's birthday. Ruby is the daughter of Agent Carter. Lee shows up, but it's too late. Her mother is there in her nun's habit, having just gifted a doll to Ruby. Agent Carter murders his wife in the kitchen and when he comes out, Lee shoots him and then shoots her mother. She attempts to shoot Ruby's doll, but there are no bullets left. The final scene is Longlegs saying "Hail Satan!" and making a kissy noise at the camera.

WHEW.

So my biggest issue with Longlegs is that instead of allowing Lee to put all the pieces together, there is just an exposition dump that explains everything. It's more satisfying when the lead character makes discoveries as opposed to just being told what's going on. 

Longlegs starts out as a fairly straightforward thriller/crime movie and then becomes supernatural. This is fine, but it also felt...messy. I mean, first of all there's a super creepy killer, but also he worships Satan, and then there are dolls that are imbued with Satan and influence people to kill...and Lee is tied to the whole thing. It's just too much. No wonder Perkins had to throw in the exposition dump. The movie would have been really long and convoluted otherwise. 

You know how Coco Chanel said "After you get fully dressed, take on thing off"? Longlegs would have benefited from taking one element out. As it is, the movie just feels crammed with ideas--all of them very intriguing and spooky, for sure! But all together they take what could have been a well-balanced dish and turn it into a child's ice cream sundae, with every type of candy known to man thrown in. 

I'm not super mad at it though, because the bones of a good horror movie--maybe even a great horror movie--are in here. Perkins just needed to trim the fat a bit. In terms of being scary, Longlegs does its job. I felt my soul leave my body a few times during the movie. But in terms of being a smart story, it's just not there. I'm hopeful that Perkins will continue to hone his craft and deliver as a truly great horror movie in the future. 

Grade: B

I'm a STAR!!!

Two movies about women who will do whatever it takes to rise to stardom.

***

MaXXXine

I'm sad to say that Ti West's MaXXXine was a disappointment for me. MaXXXine is the third in a triology of movies directed by West and starring the incomparable Mia Goth. The trilogy begins with X, which I reviewed here.  X is a pretty straightforward slasher, inspired heavily by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A group of adult filmmakers, including Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), rent out a bed and breakfast on a Texan farm to surreptitiously film a porno. They are slaughtered by Pearl (also played by Goth) and Howard, the elderly couple who own the bed and breakfast. Next came Pearl, which focuses on the life of young Pearl (played by, who else, Mia Goth) as she begins her murderous career in 1918.

Finally, we come to MaXXXine, which follows Maxine Minx (still played by Mia Goth), a few years after the events of X (Minx was the "final girl" who survived the massacre). The year is 1985, the place is Los Angeles, and Maxine is trying to jump from porn to horror movies. The City of Stars is being terrorized by the Night Stalker, and we catch glimpses of a man with leather gloves who appears to be stalking Maxine. Is it Richard Ramirez? Or is it someone who knows about what happened to Maxine and her crew at that bed and breakfast in 1979?

Unlike X, which was funny, gory, and had a great ensemble cast, and Pearl, which was a unique and colorful mishmash of genres, MaXXXine is just meh. The movie just doesn't shine. The script is pretty weak and Mia Goth gives her weakest performance of the trilogy. In the first two films we spent ample time with all the characters who were killed, which added some emotional stakes to the movies. In MaXXXine, we barely get to know the victims. Hell, we barely know *Maxine*, the star of the show! 

Despite a few fun scenes (check out the scene with Maxine and a Buster Keaton impersonator in a deserted alley), MaXXXine feels like decaf coffee after the shots of espresso that were X and Pearl. Major bummer! However, I will add that I saw this movie with a friend of mine who isn't the biggest fan of horror and she really liked it. She pointed out that it's more of a thriller/crime movie than a horror movie, which is very true. Also, there are many fans of the trilogy who enjoyed MaXXXine more than or equal to the earlier films, so I think it really comes down to personal taste. If you like 80s horror, give MaXXXine a watch.

Grade: B-

***

Showgirls

Directed by controversial filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, Showgirls is infamous. Considered to be one of the worst movies of all time, Showgirls follows Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), a woman with a troubled past who dreams of becoming a Las Vegas showgirl. After hitching a ride to Sin City, she begins her journey to stardom at a strip club called The Cheetah, where she captures the attention of Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon), a powerful star of a show called "Goddess" at the Stardust Resort and Casino. Cristal buys a private lap dance for her boyfriend, Zack Carey (Kyle MacLachlan), who also happens to be the entertainment director of the Stardust. Nomi dry humps Zack until he comes in his pants while eye-fucking Cristal.

You might think my description of the lap dance is crude, but that's because Showgirls is the most gloriously, shamelessly, trashy movie in existence. This movie is on another level. If I had a nickel for every nipple I saw in this movie, I could quit my job and spend the rest of my life playing the slots in Vegas. Showgirls is SO misogynist and exploitative of women that it circles around to parody and then back around again to sheer misogyny. I will mention that there is a GRAPHIC rape scene near the end of the movie that is completely inappropriate and unnecessary, not to mention racist (one of the few Black characters is the victim) and triggering. Look. I've seen the movie Irreversible, which features a goddamn 9 minute scene of sexual assault, but this scene felt way more upsetting and disgusting. 

Despite the truly offensive scene of sexual assault, Showgirls is just so confoundingly entertaining that I don't know how to process it. It's very much a "so bad it's good" movie, or rather a "so outrageous it's hilarious" movie. Here are a few lines from the movie to give you a sense of what I'm talking about:

"She looks better than a ten-inch dick and you know it!"

"Come back when you've fucked some of this baby fat off. See ya."

Zack: Tell me something, how much did you charge? Hooking.
Nomi: Fifty. Hundred sometimes.
Zack: You got low self-esteem baby. You're a fantastic fuck.

With its dazzling costumes, makeup, hair, and dance sequences, Showgirls proves to be diamond-encrusted, champagne-soaked trash. If you can stomach this misogyny, it's a perfect bad movie night watch. Even though I fully acknowledge the limitations of this film, I can't deny that I had a great time watching it. 

Grade: A for entertainment, D for quality

Kinds of Kindness

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most interesting directors working today. His films take place in a reality adjacent to our own, with elements of magical realism that are just taken for granted. For example, one of my favorite Lanthimos films, The Lobster, takes place in a world in which being single is illegal, so divorcees and widows are sent to a hotel where they have 45 days to find a mate, or they are transformed into an animal of their choosing. The title refers to the main character's preferred animal, if he fails to find a mate. How is this process done? It's never explained or shown. Why is it illegal to be single? It's never explained. And this is what makes Lanthimos's films so unique--he creates realities that are absurd and he doesn't hand-hold the viewer. 

This is also what makes the director so "icky" to a lot of viewers. His films are often mean-spirited and grotesque. Last year, his movie Poor Things was released and I found it to be the most positive and humane of his films. Notably, he was adapting a novel. When Lanthimos writes his own films, they are much meaner and crueler.

His latest, Kinds of Kindness, has that signature Lanthimos cruelty, coldness, and pitch-black sense of humor. The film is an anthology. Clocking in at a hefty 285 minutes, Kinds of Kindness is actually three shorter films, all with the same cast (playing different characters in each short film). The themes that run throughout each of the short films include power and control, abusive relationships, and the fear of being abandoned.

The first of the three is titled "The Death of R.M.F.". In it, Jesse Plemmons plays Robert, a man who lives a comfortable lifestyle which is fully financed and controlled by a man named Raymond (Willem Dafoe). Raymond tells Robert when to wake up, what to wear, what to eat at each meal, whether or not Robert can fuck his own wife (a wife hand-picked for him by Raymond), and which books to read (Anna Karenina). In exchange, Robert lives in a gorgeous house and wants for nothing. Is this a BDSM relationship? Well...it's too weird for that. But it's definitely a relationship. When Raymond eventually asks Robert to do something that he cannot agree to, the relationship falls apart and Robert is left to his own devices after years of having his every action guided by this god-like figure.

In the second film, titled "R.M.F. Goes Flying", Plemmons plays Daniel, a man whose wife goes missing at sea. When his wife (played by Emma Stone) is rescued, Daniel becomes convinced that she is an imposter and that his real wife is still out there, somewhere.

Finally, in the last film, "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich", Emma Stone is the main character. She plays Emily, a woman who is part of a cult (led by Willem Dafoe) that is obsessed with purity of fluids and also with finding a woman who can bring the dead back to life. Emily and Andrew (Jesse Plemmons) are sent on a mission by the cult to find this woman. 

Kinds of Kindness has been described as "off-putting" and "alienating". Grotesque and shocking things occur in each segment. But as I like grotesque and shocking things, the movie was extremely up my alley. It reminded me of a book of short stories titled You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian (who gained fame with her short story "Cat Person", featured in The New Yorker). Those short stories are all about power, control, violence, dominance, and submission.  Likewise, Kinds of Kindness has a dark, kinky feeling about it--but not in a sexy way at all. More like in a "how does a person end up in this situation??" way. It's also a really funny movie. I laughed quite a bit throughout.

The acting is great, particularly Jesse Plemmons who is a pleasure to watch in every movie he's in. He reminds me quite a bit of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, both in looks (strawberry blonde hair and heavier frame), but also in his ability to steal any movie he's in, even if just for 5 minutes. Another standout is Margaret Qualley, who also wows in everything I've seen her in and is no stranger to fucked-up, kinky movies. The main cast also includes Dafoe, Stone, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn. All of them bring their A-game to each of their parts in each short film, no matter how big or small those parts are.

I recommend Kinds of Kindness to folks who like dark, fucked-up, bizarre movies. Be warned that if you have a trigger, it's probably represented in here somewhere (I'll make a special mention that there is a scene of sexual assault in the third short film). If you like bizarre movies but this one sounds like a bit much, I recommend checking out Poor Things which is as strange and dreamlike as Lanthimos's other films, but with a much more positive and hopeful message. 

Grade: A-

Stuff I watched in...June, 2024

Hit Man

Richard Linklater's latest film is a frothy delight and is (mostly) based on a true story. Leading man Glen Powell plays Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered philosophy professor who teaches at the University of New Orleans by day and does some tech work for the New Orleans Police Department in his spare time. When undercover cop Jasper (a wonderfully slimy Austin Amelio) gets put on probation, Gary is offered the opportunity to portray a hit man as part of a sting operation. He does surprisingly well and becomes the NOPD's go-to undercover guy while Jasper is out.

Hit Man takes that stereotype of "nerdy girl who transforms into a beauty queen when you remove her glasses" and applies it to handsome Glen Powell. Powell genuinely seems like a nerdy, plain man in his college professor clothes and dorky haircut, but he transforms into a believably macho (and sexy) hit man when given a leather jacket and a different hairstyle. And when he dresses the part, he also acts the part: confident, mysterious, with a hint of danger. 

While playing the role of "Ron", a killer for hire, Gary meets Madison (Adria Arjona), an abused and scared woman looking for someone to take out her violent asshole of a husband. Feeling empathy for Madison (and not wanting to get her arrested), Gary (as "Ron") refuses her money and tells her to use it to leave his husband instead. The NOPD is pissed at him, but Gary feels that Madison is an exception to the typical lowlifes who want to hire him. 

Later on, Gary runs into Madison (who has left her husband) and the two begin a very sexy romance...the only problem is that Madison only knows Gary as Ron and he's afraid that if he reveals the truth, she'll leave him. So he keeps up the charade and also keeps Madison at a distance, explaining that she can't know about his dangerous life as a hit man. You can probably guess that hijinks ensue.

Hit Man is based on a long-form journalism article written by Skip Hollandsworth for Texas Monthly. This is the second time Linklater has brought a Skip Hollandsworth article to the silver screen: his film Bernie, starring Jack Black, is also based on an unbelievable true story. While not quite as intriguing as Bernie (one of my favorite movies), Hit Man has a similar vibe. It's a very positive story despite some dark content. As I said above, it's "frothy". It's a mix of neo-noir and romantic comedy and the chemistry between Powell and Arjona is palpable. Hit Man, which is streaming on Netflix, is well worth the watch.

Grade: B+

***

Fallout (TV series)

I watched Fallout without having played the video games the show is based on, but I was still able to follow the plot pretty easily. It was good, though not as good as The Last of Us, the *other* post-apocalyptic show based on a video game. And I know that the two shows are very different, but one can't help but compare. Fallout is funny and I love the retrofuturism of it all. I'm not going to go into the plot because, well, it's a lot. I'll say that my biggest gripe is that pacing felt a little off and a TON of stuff happened in the last 30 minutes of the final episode (setting it up for another season, which is fine, but it came off as rushed). 

The acting is all-around great. Ella Purnell, best known for her role as Jackie in Yellowjackets, is wonderful as the naive, yet brave and good-hearted Lucy, who leaves the safety of the underground bunker in which she grew up to save her dad, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan, perfect in this role), after he is kidnapped by raiders. Ella teams up with Maximus (Aaron Moten, a talented up-and-coming actor), a squire of the Brotherhood of Steel, to deliver an important piece of technology to the woman who kidnapped her dad. Walton Goggins rounds out the main cast as The Ghoul...and he is just his most Goggins-y self as a...well, part-cowboy, part-zombie. 

I probably didn't appreciate Fallout as much as the folks who have played the games, but I enjoyed it. It was entertaining with a delightful cast of characters and some really fun worldbuilding. 

Grade: B+

***

The First Omen

I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed Arkasha Stevenson's horror prequel The First Omen. Cinema is currently saturated with sequels, prequels, and reboots of horror franchises, many of them downright awful. I had no plans to see this movie until I started hearing some good things about it and found it streaming on Hulu.

Starring Nell Tiger Free (best known for her role as Leanne in the TV series Servant) as Margaret, a novitiate nun soon to take her vows in Italy in 1971, The First Omen reveals how Damien from The Omen came to be. And it is a wild story. I won't go into plot spoilers, but Margaret, with the help of priest Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson, perfect in this role), discovers a conspiracy in the Catholic Church. They rush to uncover the truth before it is too late.

The First Omen is genuinely good and scary. I mean, it's not going to win any awards, but I was captivated by the story and really creeped out during a few particularly unnerving scenes. Nell Tiger Free is a true "scream queen"--quite literally in one scene where she absolutely lets those primal screams rip, a la Isabelle Adjani in Possession. The acting really elevates what could have been a trashy religious horror film. Well, The First Omen is still a bit trashy, but in a fun way. One can't help compare it to Immaculate, the *other* Catholic pregnancy horror film of 2024, and while both movies are fun, I think The First Omen squeaks out as the better film.

Grade: B+

***

Infested

This French horror film, about venomous spiders that take over an apartment building, is not for those with arachnophobia. I really don't like spiders and I was cringing, flinching, and scratching at my skin the whole movie. 

Theo Christine stars as Kaleb, a guy who buys high end sneakers and other merchandise on the black market and resells it. He also likes exotic insects. He buys a spider from his merchandise guy and, of course, it escapes in his shitty apartment building, lays eggs, and absolute chaos ensues.

Director Sebastien Vanicek wanted to make a statement about how certain people (people of color, those who live in poverty) are considered "vermin" in France. In Infested, the residents of the apartment building are literally trapped inside by the cops and left to die so as to avoid infecting anyone else. Kaleb, his sister, and their friends must find a way to escape before the rapidly reproducing spiders (who also grow frighteningly huge) overtake the building completely.

Infested isn't that great of a movie, but it's pretty effective at giving you the heebie jeebies. With action sequences where people have to walk through a dark hallway covered in cobwebs and filled with spiders, anyone who has even a hint of spider-phobia is going to be uncomfortable. Watch at your own risk!

Grade: B

***

Shadow of the Vampire

Directed by E. Elias Merhige (same guy who directed the arthouse film Begotten, for all you horror film nerds), Shadow of the Vampire blends reality with fiction. It's about the filming of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu. John Malkovich plays eccentric and exacting director F.W. Murnau, who hires the mysterious Max Shreck (Willem Dafoe) to play the role of Count Orlock (the "Nosferatu" character). Murnau explains that Shreck will only appear in makeup and they will work around his schedule, mostly doing night shoots. The rest of the cast and crew are annoyed, but comply. And then weird things start happening on set.

Shadow of the Vampire asks: what if the guy who played "Nosferatu" actually was a vampire?! I love this whole concept and this movie is FUN. Malkovich and Dafoe are known for playing eccentrics and seeing them go toe-to-toe here is wild. If you like vampire movies, especially the non-sparkly type of vampires, check out this under seen and under appreciated gem of a film. 

Grade: B+

***

Remembering Gene Wilder

This documentary about the life of Gene Wilder is fine, but if you've already read his autobiography, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, there is not much new information here. In fact, the narration for the film is Gene Wilder reading his autobiography. There are interviews with Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor's daughter, Rain, and Wilder's widow, Karen Boyer, which provide fun anecdotes about the actor and his most famous roles. 

If you like Gene Wilder and haven't read his autobiography, this doc is worth checking out. Otherwise, skip it and watch something like the next movie on my list...

Grade: B-

***

Young Frankenstein

So, I got on a Gene Wilder kick a few months ago when I watched Blazing Saddles for the first time and since then I've read his autobiography and rewatched some of his most famous films, including Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Producers. It's been a really, really long time since I first watched Young Frankenstein, which Wilder co-wrote with Mel Brooks. It's hard to find the movie online but lo and behold the library I work at has a DVD copy!

I mean, what can you say? Young Frankenstein is a classic. It's one of my dad's favorite movies (it's probably one of YOUR dad's favorite movies too!) and he would often quote (and act out) the "walk this way" scene. It's hilarious, but it's also surprisingly sweet. It's a rare film that can have a genuinely touching moment where Dr. Frankenstein holds his creation and tells him that he is a beautiful child of God and just needs love and understanding...and also end the film on a dick joke. 

The supporting cast is excellent: Marty Feldman as Igor, Teri Garr as Inga, Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth, Cloris Leachman as Frau Blucher (*horse whinny*), and Peter Boyle as the Monster. Hell, even Gene Hackman has a cameo. The whole cast just comes together in a beautiful way and makes for an unforgettable comedy. If you haven't seen this comedic masterpiece, get on it!

Grade: A-

***

Legends of the Fall

Directed by Ed Zwick, Legends of the Fall was my motherfucking jam when I was 12 years old. The film follows the three Ludlow brothers--youngest Samuel (Henry Thomas), middle Tristan (Brad Pitt) and eldest Alfred (Aiden Quinn)--and their virulently anti-government father, Col. William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) from the early years of the 20th century through the 1920s. 

The three brothers all fall in love with one woman, Susannah Fincannon (Julia Ormond). Henry brings Susannah home as his fiancee, but Tristan and Alfred also have an immediate attraction to her. When all three brothers enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force to fight in WWI, their father (a Colonel himself) is pissed. Samuel and Alfred enlist because their personal values insist upon it, but Tristan joins to protect Samuel.

While Brad Pitt as wild-child Tristan is the main character of this film, I was in love with Henry Thomas when I saw this movie as a pre-teen. Samuel is described as "the best of us" in the movie, and it's true. All of the other characters are, to greater or lesser extents, pretty horrible. Legends of the Fall is the film version of an old school romance novel: it has a muscular, rebellious, long-haired hero, hella toxic masculinity (as well as questionable portrayals of Native Americans), melodrama out the wazoo, and a tragic love story at the center. It's gorgeously filmed and the soundtrack is almost overwhelming at times. It's exactly the type of movie to be popular and win awards in the mid-1990s. 

Overall, I gotta say I love it. I recognize that my nostalgia for the film plays a role in how I feel about it today, but damn if it doesn't leave an impression. If you're in the mood for a beautiful melodrama starring beautiful men, you could do worse than Legends of the Fall. 

Grade: B+