Maximum Spoop

Movies and TV: Gerald's Game, A Dark Song, Lore, Mindhunter, Raw

Hello boils and ghouls, lady-ghosts and gentle-wolfmen. In honor of Halloween, I bring you: A Bunch of Movies and TV I Have Watched Recently. All of them either spoopy or suspenseful. And in addition to giving them all a grade, I will also rank their level of spoopiness from one (1) skull (not spoopy at all) to four (4) skulls (maximum spoop). Please enjoy!

Gerald's Game

After the disappointing remake of IT, I am happy to report that Gerald's Game, another adaptation of a Stephen King novel, is legit scary on multiple levels. King's novel was about a middle-aged married couple, Jessie and Gerald, who, in an attempt to spice up their love life, retreat to a secluded vacation home for a weekend of sex and overpriced wagyu beef steaks. 

After popping a little blue pill, Gerald (played with white-collar menace by Bruce Greenwood) handcuffs Jessie (a superb Carla Gugino) to the bed with real, police-issue handcuffs (no trick locks here). But when his attempt at kink gets overly aggressive, the two begin arguing and Gerald has a heart attack, collapsing on the floor. That's where the real fun begins.

King is a master at the horror of confinement. Think about it: Cujo is about a mom and son trapped in a car by a rabid dog; Misery is about a writer kept under lock and key by his biggest (and most insane) fan; The Shining is about a man going stir crazy in a secluded and snowed-in hotel. Well, Gerald's Game takes it to a whole new level where survival means being able to reach a glass of water on a nearby shelf in order to stay alive another day.

But beyond the "handcuffed to a bed and no one can hear you scream" aspect of the film, the story has another level: Jessie's repressed memories of being molested by her father at a pivotal moment in her preteen years--an incident that set the stage for her deferment and submission to aggressive men in adulthood (e.g. Gerald). The film handles Jessie's flashbacks to the incident in a minimally exploitative (yet still devastating) way. 

And there is yet another level of horror to the film. As night falls and Jessie's exhaustion and thirst get the best of her, she imagines a man in the shadows of her room...or is it just her imagination? You'll have to watch it to find out! 

Gerald's Game, while perhaps not destined to be a horror classic, is both a good movie and legitimately terrifying. I highly recommend it for horror and suspense fans.

Grade: B+

Spoop-o-meter: 3.5 out of 4 skulls

***

A Dark Song

Anyone who's fooled around with a ouija board at a slumber party knows that you shouldn't fuck around with the occult. Even if you're a stone-cold atheist, attempts to contact the dead or tap into world's beyond this one feel....wrong. Like you're poking around someone else's bedroom at a party. You KNOW you shouldn't be doing it, as curious as you might be.

A Dark Song is a slow-burn horror movie about a woman, Sophia, who hires a man, Joseph, to help her participate in an elaborate dark magic ritual to contact her dead son. When I say the ritual is elaborate, I mean that Sophia and Joseph spend months secluded in a house, fasting intermittently and developing a sort of Stockholm Syndrome type relationship with one another. 

And then people...or things...start showing up inside the house...

The plot of A Dark Song isn't all that complicated and the horror lies in the tension that ramps up to an explosive and genuinely terrifying climax. If you're a fan of occult horror or haunted house movies, you will likely not be disappointed. Be prepared to be thoroughly spooked.

Grade: B+

Spoop-o-meter: 3.5 out of 4 skulls

***

Lore

Based on the popular podcast, this 6 episode series on Amazon Prime is more fascinating (and, at times, gut-wrenchingly sad) than spoopy. The episodes, narrated by Aaron Mahnke (who is not a good narrator. His voice is halting and irritating. Think: William Shatner + uptalking), focus on folklore from around the world and its ties to the modern world. For example, in what I think is the best episode, "Black Stockings", Manhke ties the 2009 murder of a woman, Caroline Coffey, by her husband, Blazej Kot, to the Irish lore of changelings: fairies that kidnap humans and leave an imposter behind that looks exactly like the human, but behaves strangely. Kot's defense team argued that he suffered from Capgras Delusion--a medical condition where a person is convinced that one or more of their loved ones have been replaced by imposters. 

In another episode, "Echoes", Manke traces our fear of insane or mentally unstable people to the rise of the frontal lobotomy in the mid-Twentieth Century and how it was used to control and sedate people who exhibited behavior and emotions that went against the norm (yes, he gives a shout out to the sad case of Rosemary Kennedy).

Lore is, in this way, less about the horror of the supernatural and more about the horror of what humans are capable of doing to other humans and how we justify our atrocious behavior. Lore is a good show for folks who want a little spoopiness this Halloween season without full-blown jump scares or gory torture porn. 

Grade: B

Spoop-o-meter: 2 out of 4 skulls

***

Mindhunter

A Netflix original series, Mindhunter follows two (fictional) criminal profilers, Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) as they interview (non-fictional) serial killers in the 1970s in an attempt to understand the psychology of men who commit horrendous crimes in order to possibly prevent future murders.

I loved this show, which is directed by David Fincher and strongly resembles his film Zodiac, which is one of my favorite movies. I binge-watched the 10 episode series in 3 days. Your mileage might vary though. There have been complaints that the show is too white and too male, although, I'd argue that since the show is about serial killers, who are overwhelmingly white and male and who overwhelmingly kill white women, this is less an artistic choice and more a reflection of reality.  

That said, the show goes places some viewers won't want to go. Although there is minimal visual violence, save a few gory photos, there is a lot of discussion--often in the killer's own words--about depraved acts, such as, I don't know, cutting off a victim's head and fucking the body. The show is rife with discussions that are both misogynistic and about misogyny. And the worst part, to me, is how obvious it all is. Guy wants to fuck a 12 year old girl. He does, she gets upset, so he bashes her head in. Another guy has a controlling and abusive mother who delights in humiliating him. So he "humiliates" other women by killing them and fucking their lifeless corpses. I watch this show and I'm like, 'well yeah, of course stuff like that happens'. It's not really a shock--and that's what's so shocking. While ostensibly about the psychology of sociopaths, Mindhunter's subtext is about gender and sexual politics. #notallmen are rapist and serial murders...but #yesallwomen have felt like prey at times in their lives.

Mindhunter, perhaps more than any other movie or show on this list, is not for the faint of heart. And not because of jump scares or violent images, but because of the show's direct stare into the Evil That Men Do and the clinical observation and categorization of that evil. Fans of true crime will eat this shit up, as I did. Others, stay away.

Grade: A-

Spoop-o-meter: 3 out of 4 skulls

***

Raw

Here's a movie for fans of gross-out horror and also feminist horror. This French language film directed by Julia Ducournau is about Justine (Garance Marillier, all gangly limbs and wide eyes), a freshman student at a veterinary college who is forced to eat raw meat as part of a hazing ritual (oh, those vet students and their hazing!) despite the fact that she's a vegetarian. Soon after, she's eating shawarma on the sly with her gay guy friend, Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) and eating raw chunks of salmon out of the fridge as a midnight snack.

But shawarma and salmon don't cut it for long. Justine is hungry for flesh--both in a sexual way and in a literal way. 

Like many coming-of-age horror films, sex and death and tied closely together in Raw. And as with many horror films with a young, female protagonist (think: Ginger Snaps, It Follows) these cravings push against the self-control young women are expected to exert with matters related to their bodies. Young women aren't supposed to eat too much or be too sexy. Justine, after tasting animal flesh, quickly bursts through those taboos--she gets drunk and kisses random girls and boys at a party; she seduces Adrien and can't stop biting him during sex; she gets in physical fights with her older sister who is also a student at the school. 

Raw is not for those with weak stomachs. Though certainly not the grossest horror film I've seen, it's got some pretty stomach-churning scenes (thanks to a great props department). It's not "scary" in the sense of jump scares, but it is, well, raw. For fans of female-driven horror, Raw is definitely worth the watch.

Grade:B+

Spoop-o-meter: 3 out of 4 skulls

Boob Tube 2: Electric Boobaloo

TV: Catastrophe, Master of None, Westworld, Big Little Lies


We're in the Golden Age of Television, people. Even I'm being pulled more toward TV than movies these days, and that's saying a lot.

***

Catastrophe

In a year of "meh" movies (with the exception of February's Get Out), the number one pop culture item I've felt the most connection to and have recommended to anyone who will listen is Catastrophe.

Created by and starring comedians Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, the (very short and binge-able) series starts when American businessman Rob meets Irish teacher Sharon in a bar in London. Although Rob doesn't drink due to his history of alcoholism (more on this later), he buys Sharon a drink and the two almost immediately return to his hotel to fuck. They proceed to spend the entire week Rob is in London banging each other like crazed weasels.

I'll start by saying that Catastrophe is INCREDIBLY REFRESHING in how it portrays middle-aged people and sex. This is an anti-slut shaming show in which people have sex because it's, I don't know, FUN and because they're grown-ass people.

But, even though they're 40ish, the crux of the show lies in a surprising twist: Sharon gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. After she tells Rob, he moves to England to try to actually make it work with her and have a role in his child's life.

I really don't know what it is about Catastrophe that makes it so damn good, but it's easily one of the best comedies...maybe one of the best shows, period, I've ever seen. It's hilarious, it's realistic, it's heartwarming in a non-sentimental way. It WILL make you cry, especially the end of the third season.

Delaney and Horgan are very charismatic leads--they are people you would definitely want to know in real life. Bucking the trend of proudly "unlikeable" characters in shows like Girls and It's Always Sunny, Catastrophe tries a different angle: characters who have flaws and are *at times* unlikeable, but are generally pretty cool people. You know, like how real life is?

Some of the topics covered in the three short seasons of the show (each season is 6 episodes long, and each ep is 25 minutes, meaning the entire run of the series is shorter than the Lord of the Rings trilogy) include: "geriatric" pregnancy, adultery, dealing with an aging parent, and alcoholism. Rob's story line where his drinking problem flares up after years of sobriety is based in part by Delaney's real life struggle with the disease, which lead him to nearly kill himself in a car accident in his 20s. It's a very potent storyline since it shows how helpless one can be--even a successful, strong, intelligent adult--when faced with an addiction.

And yet, these heavy storylines come with a large dose of humor and forgiveness. Catastrophe is one of the few shows I've seen that realistically deals with life issues without crushing or destroying the characters that face them.

I really can't recommend it enough. If you watch one show this year (and again, the time commitment is minimal), watch Catastrophe.

Grade: A+

PS: Did I mention that Carrie Fisher is in it? She plays Rob's mom. It's one of her final projects before she passed.

***

Master of None, season 2

After a nearly perfect first season, Aziz Ansari returns with a much more personal and uneven season 2 of his show about an Indian guy named Dev trying to make it in Hollywood and also deal with dating, parents, etc.

When I say that this season is "uneven", I mean that with the success of the first season, Ansari took artistic and personal liberties with this season--with results that will thrill some and annoy others (one friend of mine said she hated the first episode and couldn't watch any further).

Indeed, I found myself incredibly impressed with some aspects of the season and "meh" about others. The episode "Thanksgiving", co-written by Lena Waithe, who went on the win an Emmy for it and became the first black female to win an Emmy in the comedy writing category*, is possibly one of the best episodes of television I've seen this year. But the later episodes with Dev pining over an engaged female friend seem to verge on artistic masturbation, as if Ansari is trying to take a personal (and self-flagellating) story and layer artistry over it to make it seem more important than it actually is.

But despite the ups and downs, the second season of Master of None still has Ansari's signature goofy wit and keen eye for the everyday absurdities that Millennials in particular have to deal with--for example, being close to our parents (good!) while still feeling a bit under their thumb (bad!), as Ansari highlights in the funniest episode of the bunch, "Religion". Also: the hamster wheel of online dating that becomes so repetitive it's no longer fun.

I've never much cared for Ansari's stand-up comedy, but he seems to have found the right outlet for his unique voice with Master of None. If you liked season 1, you will probably also enjoy season 2.

Grade: A-

* Fucking get it, girl!

 


 












***

Westworld

After finding out that I have 4 months of free HBO on account of being "a loyal Verizon customer", I went straightaway to the first season of Westworld and I was not disappointed.

"Westworld" is a playground for rich people who want to do immoral things with no consequences. It is a park inspired by the American West: saloons, brothels, cowboys n' Indians, shoot-outs, and rugged adventure. There are a variety of "hosts" in the park--robots designed to look and act perfectly human--for the visitors ("guests") to interact with and, if we're being honest here, to fuck, rape, and kill without facing the consequences of hurting a "real" human.

But, as we all know, the singularity is imminent and some of the hosts begin acting up--likely because they were programmed to experience "reveries", that is, memories. This is NOT a good thing in a place like Westworld, where hosts' memories would be filled with the most horrific shit you can imagine.

We see two sides of the park: inside the park, we have Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood, insanely good in this plum role), a cattle rancher's daughter who feels compelled by a voice in her head telling her to "remember"; Teddy (James Mardsen), a cowboy with one motivation: protect Dolores; Maeve (Thandie Newton), a brothel Madam whose intelligence level allows her to begin "waking up" outside the park when she's in for repairs; and many others. Outside the park, we have a battle of wills between Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen), and park founder Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) over how much sentience the hosts should be allowed to possess and how to deal with hosts that go rogue and have the potential for violence.

Westworld is, of course, about what it means to be human. From the host side, the question lies in consciousness and will--the ability to develop and follow your own voice. From the guest side, the question lies in human capability for violence/apathy vs. kindness/caring. Over and over, guests tell other guests, "this park will show you who you truly are"--i.e. are you a person who, given a chance, could kill in cold blood? Rape a screaming woman? Kill a bad guy?

I once briefly dated this guy who was very much an insecure asshole (he's married now, to a very lucky girl 😎) who told me that all humans are motivated by one (or more) of these three things: money, sex, and power (he then asked me which one of those was most compelling to me and I answered "sex" without thinking twice, and he answered "power". We were not together much longer). The guests at the park already have the money...so what they seek inside the park: pleasures of the flesh, or the intoxication of total power over another being, tells us about their character. And it might tell YOU something about your character, based on which host or guest you find yourself rooting for and identifying with. I'm Team Bernard, for the record.

Grade: A-

PS: Westworld also stars that guy who Laura Linney did NOT fuck in Love Actually, like a damn fool.

 

 Laura Linney...your character in Love Actually, sucks, actually.










***

Big Little Lies

It starts as trash and blossoms into something more. Big Little Lies is an HBO miniseries based on the novel by Liane Moriarty and produced by one Reese Witherspoon who also stars as a very, very Reese Witherspoon-esque character.

The series stars out with a very trashy, pulpy flavor: someone is killed during a fundraising gala for a public school where the children of Monterey, CA's wealthiest attend. We don't know who got killed or who did it and the series backs up a few months to the first day of school, with high-strung, super-nosy Madeline Mackenzie (Witherspoon) dropping her first grader off at school and making the acquaintance of young, definitely NOT wealthy single mom Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley).

The series also introduces us to Madeline's best friend, Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), a once high-powered lawyer and now a stay-at-home mother of twins and wife of the much younger Perry (Alexander Skarsgaard).

Secrets and drama abound. Did you guys know that being obscenely rich doesn't automatically make you happy in life?!

While I fully expected Big Little Lies to be a high-gloss soap opera (and, in many ways, it is), many of the problems the characters have are actually "real" problems, not just gossip and petty power plays (although there are those as well). The series tackles domestic violence, rape, bullying, divorce, and many more difficulties that people both rich and less rich face. The series also has a strong, grounded anchor in Shailene Woodley who is easily the most relateable character and serves as a counter-point to the other women who live in insanely gorgeous mansions while Woodley lives in a one bedroom apartment with her son.

Big Little Lies is, above all things, stupendously entertaining. I couldn't wait to get home from work and watch the next episode. And at 6 episodes total, it was all over much too quickly. The only thing I didn't like was the conclusion which I found a little too predictable and convenient. The show is certainly not perfect, but it does give you the best of both worlds in terms of juiciness and weight.

Grade: B+

Mother F*cker

Movies: mother!

Welp. This certainly was a movie.

Darren Aronofsky's film mother! lives up to the hype of being unlike any movie I've seen before. It is balls-to-the-wall bat-shit insane, especially in its third act. I feel really bad for the poor kids sitting next to me who probably thought they were buying tickets to a scary movie starring Jennifer Lawrence.

Well, J. Law is definitely (literally) front and center during the entire movie, and, yes, parts of it are very horrifying. But this movie is so beyond any given genre or narrative that I don't know what people who didn't obsessively research the film (like me) before seeing it thought. They probably hated it.

If you want to go into mother! knowing nothing, please do so--but be warned that this movie is NOT for the faint of heart. There are a couple scenes that made me wonder how the hell the film ended up with an R rating instead of unrated or NC-17.

I'm going to go into total and complete spoilers below, so if you want to see the movie knowing nothing, stop reading now.

***

Jennifer Lawrence is a woman married to a much older man (Javier Bardem). The characters have no names. Bardem is a successful poet struggling with writer's block and Lawrence is a homemaker restoring their grand house, which is located in the middle of nowhere, without even a road or driveway leading up to it. The house was once nearly destroyed in a fire, and Lawrence takes great pleasure in restoring it.

One night there is a knock at the door: it is a man (Ed Harris, great as always) who claims he thought the house was a bed and breakfast. Bardem welcomes him in and asks him to spend the night, much to the consternation of Lawrence, who is unsettled by the stranger's presence.

But things get really strange the next day when the man's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer, excellent as a boozy cougar type) shows up at the door with luggage and everything. What the hell is going on? Did these two know about the house? And why are they so comfortable making themselves at home? The guests are verging on rude: Harris repeatedly smokes indoors, despite Lawrence's request he take it outside; Pfeiffer point blank asks Lawrence why she hasn't had children yet ("Is it him, or...?" she rudely inquires about the couple's fertility). Lawrence is incredibly annoyed...while Bardem seems 100% comfortable with the strange guests.

THEN their two sons show up. Played by real life brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson, the two young men *immediately* begin fighting until one of them kills the other.

Ok pause for a second. Did I mention that Ed Harris' character has a bruised/broken rib. And that he and Pfeiffer break into Bardem's study and touch/break an object they're specifically told not to touch? And they have two sons...one that kills the other in anger...

Are we getting the picture yet? Well, if you spent your Sundays the way I did growing up, you may have figured it out by now.

Anyway, after the son kills the other son, Bardem allows the man and wife to bring their friends over to help them grieve. Then a party breaks out. All of this to the absolute horror of Lawrence, who literally mopped up a dead guy's blood earlier.

She screams and begs these people to leave her home. They don't, and, in fact, one of them calls her an "arrogant cunt", and two others sit on her kitchen sink, which promptly breaks away from the wall and starts a flood of water.

A flood? hmmm...

Finally, they leave. Bardem and Lawrence fight, then fuck, and then magically she wakes up pregnant. And the couple have peace and quiet for about 9 months.

But THEN Bardem writes his next great poem. Word spreads quickly and on a special night where Lawrence cooks her husband a beautiful dinner for just the two of them, a bunch of Bardem's fans show up at the door.

And THIS is when shit gets wild. Over the next 30 minutes of the film, more and more people stream into the home as Lawrence begs them to leave and begins to experience contractions. The fans are literally worshipful of Bardem--begging him to touch them and creating icons with his picture. They begin taking parts of the home ("to prove we were here" one explains) and literally destroying the house. Total chaos reigns. The cops show up. They pepper spray people. Rioters show up. Terrorists show up and start killing people. The house looks like a war zone. And Lawrence goes into labor and finally gives birth in Bardem's study.

If you've been tracking the metaphor, you've realized at this point that mother! is a retelling of the creation story of Genesis, with Bardem as God and Lawrence as Mother Nature. She's not happy about her husband letting Mankind overrun her beautiful paradise. But it's only about to get worse. She's just given birth to God's Son.

What happens to God's Son in the Bible?

As Lawrence holds their newborn son in her arms, her husband tells her that the crowd outside wants to see him. She refuses. But when she falls asleep, she awakens to realize that he has taken the baby and is showing him off to the cheering masses. But then someone takes the baby and begins passing him around the crowd. Lawrence is apoplectic.

And then you hear a snap.

And then...take and eat, this is my body given to you.

YUP. A BABY GETS EATEN IN THIS MOVIE.

Which makes complete sense given the plot.

Lawrence, who has been screaming the whole movie, screams in agony to see her son's body being consumed by the crowd. When she tries to stop them, they beat the living fuck out of her, calling her a whore. Because that's what Mother Nature is to Mankind: a whore to beat, rape, and kill. Given to us by a loving God.

Meanwhile, her husband begs her: "we can't let his death mean nothing. We have to forgive them!"

Lawrence ain't having none of that. She crawls to the basement with a lighter. She spills oil from the furnace to the ground. She lights up. And the house explodes.

But Bardem isn't done using her yet. He is unharmed, while she is badly burned. The last thing he does is remove her heart from her dying body and molds it into a crystal (identical to one Adam and Eve...whoops, I mean Harris and Pfeiffer...break in his study, earlier). This crystal heals the home, helping it rise from the ashes...and then we see a new young woman--a different actress--wake up in their bed and call for Bardem. The cycle has begun again.

***

Ok, so that's the plot. I was really of two minds about this film: on the one hand, it's insanely pretentious and really on the nose. We get it, Aronofsky: you believe that people are shit who have destroyed the earth. You're right! We ARE shit. Human beings are shit. We rape, kill, plunder.

Aronofsky apparently also believes that God Himself is the Ultimate Shit because He created us and allowed us to murder and eat his son and beat up his wife--all for a little glory. I dunno, maybe Aronofsky is onto something. Based on some of the ways I've seen "Christians" behave toward their fellow man, it wouldn't surprise me to find out they're actually worshipping a big Asshole in the sky. There are a few Christians I know who are really good people, but there are a lot who would murder, rape, and torture their fellow man in a heartbeat if they believed their God told them to do it. Heck, some of them are already doing just that!

So, Aronofsky has a bone to pick with humans and with God, and pick it he does, in a pretentious and silly way in mother!

BUT. On the other hand. The sheer fucking audacity of this movie. The speed at which things escalate. It truly feels like you, the audience, are trapped inside a nightmare. Things don't make sense, time skips forward, the walls bleed.

This isn't unusual for an Aronofsky film. From Pi to Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan, his films include various dreamlike elements that verge on insanity. mother! just dials it up to eleven.

And, although the film really punches you in the face with its message, I have to admit I kind of loved the idea of taking the Bible and turning it into psychological horror from the perspective of Mother Nature. It's the ultimate taboo: it's one thing to say you don't believe in God and it's quite another to suggest that God is actually self-obsessed, sadistic, and dismissive of those who give Him everything. But, there's Biblical precedent for that point of view: just read the Old Testament to see God murdering every motherfucker in sight! He creates the world and Man, and then He's like "fuck this shit, these human are terrible!" and wipes us all out. Meanwhile, Mother Earth is trying to grow fruit and flowers and little fuzzy bunnies and Mankind is like...shitting all over it! If I was Her, I'd blow the world to hell too!

So, I really have to hand it to Aronofsky. He has directed a movie that whether you love it or hate it, you are GOING to feel *something* about it and you are going to talk about it. I've seen some news items that are calling mother! "the worst film of 2017", which is hilariously and provably wrong. The Emoji Movie is obviously the worst movie of 2017 because a film like that doesn't fucking try. mother! on the other hand, tries. It tries really, really hard to say something and be something and make you feel something. And I don't care what anyone says, that's the definition of art.

mother! may be pretentious trash. It may be a "feast of filth". It may be a wild scream into the void. But it most certainly is one thing: a work of art.

Grade: A-

Summer Movie Wrap-Up

Movies: IT, Logan Lucky, Dunkirk, Rough Night

Hello readers!

Once again, time has slipped me by and I am in catch up mode for my reviews. While most of these movies are worthy of an individual blog post, I think it'll be easier for me to just rip the band-aid off in one go. That way, I can make space in my reviewing schedule for the most wonderful time of the year: Oscar Season, which is rapidly approaching.

Here we go:

IT

I have not read the Stephen King novel IT, nor have I seen the 1990 mini-series with Tim Curry playing the iconic Pennywise the Dancing Clown. So I went into IT pretty blindly. I knew the basic plot, but I had nothing to compare it to.

I was surprised to find that IT wasn't scary to me at all.

What's interesting about the film--and I'm sure what King intended all along--is that the humans in the small town of Derry, Maine, where events take place, are scarier than the evil lurking in the sewers. We have a roving gang of bullies that see no limits to the violence and humiliations they commit upon their victims. We have distant, neglectful parents; or, conversely, parents that try to keep their children trapped under their wing instead of encouraging independence. There's a backstory of brutal, race-based violence. And most disturbing of all, a plot line of father-daughter sexual abuse.

The reason Derry is so fucked up can (possibly?) be blamed on what some consider a town curse. Over the decades, bad things have happened in Derry. Children go missing at a rate much higher than the national average. Something below the town feeds on fear, violence and pain.

When Billy's (Jaeden Lieberher) kid brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes missing, he bands together with his friends--they call themselves the Loser's Club--to find out what happened to Georgie. Each kid has a terrifying vision that plays on their individual fears, be they germs, blood, or--yes--clowns.

The Losers' journey takes them into the sewers of Derry and to the heart of fear, which they can only overcome by sticking together...and by looking Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, excellent) in the face and telling him they're not afraid.

I have to conclude that while IT was solid, I wasn't super impressed with it. Something seemed "off" about it, and not in a good, creepy way. It was less scary and more campy than I thought it would be, and I wasn't prepared for that. But as a horror aficionado, it could be that I'm too jaded to plug into the dread that IT is supposed to make you feel. So, depending on how scared of clowns you are, or how sensitive to children in peril you are, your mileage may vary,

Grade: B-

***

Logan Lucky

Here's another film I wanted to like more than I did (you'll find this to be the case for almost all the movies I saw this summer).

A mere four years after Steven Soderbergh "retired", he has returned with a wacky, Southern-fried heist movie. Channing Tatum plays Jimmy Logan, a down-on-his-luck blue collar man who gets fired from his construction job due to an injured leg and whose trashy ex-wife (Katie Holmes in a thankless role) has custody of their crazy-adorable daughter.

Jimmy's brother, Clyde (Adam Driver, awesome as always, but with a...questionable...accent) lost his forearm in Iraq and now tends bar at a shitty dive off the freeway. The Logan family is said to have a curse, although their sister, Mellie (Riley Keough, in a colorless female role...thanks, Soderbergh, and fuck you too!) seems to have escaped it...so far.

 Jimmy gets a plan in his head to right the wrongs visited upon him and his family by robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which has a series of pneumatic tubes to move money around. To do this, the Logan brothers have to bust a gifted safecracker, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, hilarious and playing against type), out of prison so he can help them. Thus begins a hilarious and complex heist, which includes getting Clyde *into* prison so he can get Joe out of it, plus asking Joe's redneck brothers for assistance in breaking into the Speedway and moving trashbags of cash out.

There's also a subplot involving Jimmy's daughter in a child beauty pageant. Call this movie Ocean's Eleven by way of O Brother Where Art Thou and Little Miss Sunshine.

This is a movie where the journey, not the destination, is the point. The film ends on a somewhat unexpected note that may leave you wondering what the point was. But it's not about how the film ends, or what the "moral" of the story was. It's about the fun you have in getting there. Or something.

Logan Lucky made me realize that while I recognize Steven Soderbergh's gifts as a director, he's really not a director I connect with. Other than Magic Mike (the first one), which is one of my favorite movies, I always feel a bit underwhelmed Soderbergh's films. Granted, I have yet to see Out of Sight and Traffic--which are considered to be among his best work. But the films I have seen have left me feeling like "is that all there is?" At least with Logan Lucky, there's plenty of laughs and entertainment on route to that ennui.

Grade: B-

***

Dunkirk

Surprise, surprise: another movie I felt "meh" about despite its pedigree! Sorry guys, I guess this blog entry is a bit of downer. Or maybe not...maybe it's a good counterpoint to the rapturous reviews Dunkirk and the above two films have received.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is undoubtedly a very tense film. It's also a surprisingly short film, which I think serves it well since it's not really plot or character driven.

Dunkirk tells the story of the attempt to rescue thousands of Allied soldiers from the shores of Dunkirk, France after the Germans have them surrounded and begin bombing them from above. The film is broken into three chapters: "The Mole", which focuses on the attempts to evacuate soldiers from the beach; "The Sea", about a local man in Weymouth (right across the sea from Dunkirk) who takes his personal boat to try to rescue soldiers; and "The Air", about a couple fighter pilots trying to fight the Germans who are dropping bombs on the exposed soldiers on the beach.

One problem I personally had with Dunkirk is that I know so little about war. The types of guns, aircraft, boats, etc--it's really just not my bag. So a lot of what was going on didn't really click--especially during "The Air" portions of the film.

My favorite portions of the film were "The Sea" sequences, which were much more character driven. Additionally, the scenes on the beach were continuously tense, which was good because it helped me *feel* something in a movie that otherwise would have bored me to tears.

Dunkirk is star-studded and everyone involved gives undeniably top-notch performances. So I'm not sure why I didn't connect with the film. I feel like I have to give it two grades--an objective one that honors the artistry and talent that went into this film, and a subjective one about my personal feelings.

Objective grade: B
Subjective grade: B-

***

Rough Night

Ironically, the movie with the shittiest reviews is going to get the best rating because I fucking loved this movie. Now, let me give you some context: I watched Rough Night on an international flight during which I was completely exhausted and tipsy on free wine. So, that might have colored my opinion. But fuck all of that, this movie is hilarious.

Rough Night is a comedy about a bachelorette party go awry. We have our bride-to-be: uptight Jess, played with sleek Type-A-ness by Scarlet Johansson. We have her best friend Alice, a teacher by day, horny party slut by night (played with gusto by Jillian Bell). There's Frankie (Illana Glazer), a riot girl activist and Blair (Zoe Kravitz), who was Frankie's lover in college and now is a corporate mom going through a divorce. Finally, there's Pippa (Kate McKinnon), a flighty, wacky Australian that Jess met during her study abroad semester. All five ladies meet up at a fancy beach home to spend a weekend in Miami in celebration of Jess's upcoming nuptials to Peter (Paul Downs).

I'm not going to pull any punches: this film is, in many ways, deeply conventional. It does the whole "Sex and the City" thing by giving each character one overarching personality trait as a shortcut to telling them apart. It also has a lot of "female friend movie" tropes, like the best friend who is being pushed out by a newer, shinier model.

 But despite these conventions, Rough Night is funny and dirty enough for a rollicking good time. Some high points include when the ladies meet their neighbors, a pair of overly-friendly swingers (played with perfect naughtiness and sleaziness by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell) and a subplot involving groom-to-be Paul's bachelor party antics.

Rough Night isn't going to win any awards, but given how poorly it was reviewed when it came out in theatres earlier this summer, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Maybe exhaustion, three cups of airplane wine, and low expectations make for the greatest viewing experience of all.

Grade: B+

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 

Girlfriend in a Coma

Movies: The Big Sick

The real-life love story between writer-producer Emily Gordon and comic Kumail Nanjiani is truly stranger than fiction. The two met at one of Kumail's stand-up shows, dated for a couple months, and then Emily became very sick and had to be put in a medically-induced coma for over a week. It turns out she had a rare disease called adult-onset Still's disease that can cause severe infections. When Emily came out of her coma, Kumail knew he wanted to marry her--a tad difficult considering that the Pakistani comic had promised his parents he would eventually enter into an arranged marriage, as is the custom in his culture. He didn't. He and Emily married a less than a year later--only 8 months after they first met. They've been together for over a decade now.

If it sounds like the plot of a wacky romantic comedy, well, Emily and Kumail thought so too! The Big Sick, directed by Michael Showalter and starring Kumail as himself and Zoe Kazan as Emily, takes some artistic license with Emily and Kumai's love story, adding in dramatic elements like a pre-coma break-up when Emily finds a cigar box in Kumail's room containing head shots of Pakistani women that his mother sent him as potential brides. But overall, it appears to stay true to the heart of their story.

The Big Sick is absolutely adorable and both devastatingly funny and just plain devastating at times. After Emily is put into a coma to save her life, Kumail calls her parents--played wonderfully by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter. Beth (Hunter) is a 5' 2" mama bear who is very suspicious of Kumail, the man who broke her daughter's heart. Terry (Romano) is a bit more open-minded and impressed that Kumail is sincere in his desire to hang out at the hospital everyday, waiting for updates on Emily's condition.

By the nature of the plot, The Big Sick really is more Kumail's story than Emily's, since she's asleep for 50% of it. The film explores his fraught relationship with his parents who fully expect Kumail to marry a woman chosen by them. They are devout Muslims and Kumail humors them by pretending to pray even though he's not a believer. To make things more complicated, Kumail's older brother did enter into an arranged marriage and, for all intents and purposes, chose the life his parents expected him to choose. Kumail's wildly different path--trying to make it in the cutthroat world of comedy and falling in love with a white woman--challenges the rest of his family's choices on a deep level. But, as he points out in a climatic scene, they left Pakistan to raise him in America. Can they really blame him for embracing American life fully?

That The Big Sick is about an interracial couple, yet avoids eroticizing and politicizing that aspect, is pretty amazing. The fact that Kumail is Pakistani and Emily is white does come up over the course of the film, mostly during conversations between Kumail and his brother and parents about their expectation he marry within their culture, but there is an absolutely remarkable lack of hostile racism from anyone in the film, white or brown. There is the scene where Terry asks what Kumail's "opinion" of 9/11 is and Kumail deadpans "9/11. Well, it was a tragedy. We lost 19 of our best guys." (a conversation that apparently didn't actually happen). But overall, Emily's parents take it in stride that their daughter is dating a brown man. I don't know if Emily and Kumail's real-life relationship was so free of racial hostility (somehow, I doubt it), but it was really cool to see a movie where the fact that the leads have different color skin isn't their biggest obstacle (at least, I thought it was cool. Others might disagree).

Overall, I loved The Big Sick. It's a big-hearted movie for the small-hearted world we live in right now. And the fact that it's based in reality makes it even sweeter because it's even less of a fairytale. As much as I like movies that are massively fucked up and depressing, I also like being reminded that real love and commitment actually do exist and can overcome a myriad of obstacles.

Grade: B+