Stoker
There's more than one transition going on in Park Chan-wook's 2013 thriller Stoker. Yes, the film tells the story of how the seemingly carefree India (Mia Wasikowska) goes from worshipping her father to worshipping her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). But the Hitchcockian thriller -- and it is one, beyond the shadow of a doubt -- was also Director Park’s first English-language title. Continue Reading →
Scream VI
SimilarCube (1997), Cube Zero (2004), Maria Full of Grace (2004), Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995),
Watch afterAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), Evil Dead Rise (2023),
StarringJack Quaid, Josh Segarra,
The Scream franchise's strength has always been in its self-awareness. Initially, it turned the camera towards the audience, demanding that they ask themselves why it's so entertaining to see other people being made to suffer, and what happens if, as the tagline went, someone took their love of scary movies too far. Then it mocked the inevitability of sequels, then the movie industry in general, then how the media treats trauma victims like celebrities, with varying levels of success. The 2022 reboot, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, sought to address all of it in some fashion, with toxic fandom on top of that. It was mostly successful, despite being at times aggressively meta. Scream VI does much of the same, although this time the knowing winks and nods are starting to feel a little tired. Continue Reading →
Umma
Sandra Oh has always had range, and her demonstration of it for viewers has always been spectacular. However, the feat she’s pulled this month will be tough to trounce. Oh has folks turning red one Friday and blanch white the next. And she pulls off the jaw-dropping swing in an on-screen mold as traditionally restrictive as “mother to a teenage daughter.” That said, whereas Mrs. Lee in Turning Red strives to adapt whenever possible, Amanda (Oh) in Umma refuses to. Continue Reading →
The Blazing World
SimilarPoseidon (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
Carlson Young writes, directs and stars in a baffling horror-fantasy about a young woman who deals with trauma by disappearing into an elaborate alternate universe.
The nature of trauma, and how it impacts the human brain, is something that’s frustrating understudied, largely because it’s different for everyone. Some of us can take the terrible things we’ve experienced head on, moving past them and living a normal life. Some of us struggle to maintain that sense of normalcy, while our trauma lingers in the shadows just behind us. And some are so consumed by it that the entire world becomes a hostile, dangerous place. Carlson Young’s The Blazing World is an elaborate take on the latter, an ambitious spectacle for the eyes that lacks in comprehension.
Based on her short film of the same name, Young writes, directs and stars as Margaret, who as a child witnessed the accidental death of her twin sister. The event leaves her haunted by visions of a mysterious man (Udo Kier) who might be the Devil, if for no other reason than every character Udo Kier plays might be the Devil. Some fifteen or so years later, he’s still hanging around, leering at her and trying to lure Margaret into some sort of portal. Continue Reading →
Zodiac
First and foremost, Zodiac is a movie about seeing. Seeing patterns, seeing possibilities, seeing threads to pick up and follow, even if they don’t end up going anywhere. Like Se7en, a great deal of focus is on the tediousness of a murder investigation: the collecting and comparing of fingerprints, tired looking men discussing clues in dank, poorly-lit offices, sparring with the media, and endless, often pointless phone calls. The violence in Zodiac is shocking, but brief, reserved to the first half hour of the movie. Even the use of crime scene photos is kept to a minimum. Unlike Se7en, David Fincher isn’t rubbing the horrors we inflict on each other in the audience’s face. Here, it’s something more subtle, the creeping fear of I know I’m right...but what do I do now? Continue Reading →