The Novice
SimilarBlood and Chocolate (2007),
Watch afterDune (2021), Licorice Pizza (2021),
Isabelle Furhman's relentless lead performance as an obsessive aspiring athlete propels the Tribeca rowing drama forward.
“Rhythm is everything,” a crew coach tells Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) at one point during The Novice, which won awards for best U.S. narrative feature, actress, and cinematography at the Tribeca Festival this week. The coach could well be explaining how this movie, about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at varsity rowing, differentiates itself from Black Swan (the movie about a young woman with an obsessive drive to be the best at ballet) or Whiplash (the movie about a young man with an obsessive drive to be the best at jazz drumming) or The Social Network (the movie about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at something, even if it winds up destroying the world, in part because there’s no way that he can row crew)—all of which The Novice resembles in content, and sometimes form.
Writer-director Lauren Hadaway’s rhythm is her own, distinct from Darren Aronofsky’s, David Fincher’s, and Damien Chazelle’s, the triumvirate of dude directors who made those previous, excellent studies in obsession. Perhaps informed by her own college rowing experience, Hadaway keys into a relentless push-pull, especially as Alex drives herself further, further, and further still before picking herself up off the floor. Continue Reading →
Awake
In the world of Awake, the plague that’s fallen over mankind is one we’re all at least vaguely familiar with: insomnia. A brilliant flash and satellites falling from the sky, and suddenly the entire world has lost its ability to sleep. Bleary, desperate citizens watch helplessly as their sanity slips away, forming classic post-apocalyptic factions. There are criminals that run rampant, violent zealots, and creepy militias. Continue Reading →
Those Who Wish Me Dead
StudioBron Studios, New Line Cinema,
While Those Who Wish Me Dead is coming out in theaters this weekend (be safe, especially if you're not vaccinated!), it's probably the movie to benefit most from Warner Bros. pandemic-fueled decision to simultaneously throw their releases up on HBO Max. From stem to stern, Taylor Sheridan's latest feels like the kind of movie you'd find on old-school HBO in the '90s, or FX or TNT, watching with your dad over a holiday weekend. It's silly, forgettable schlock, and yet I can't get too mad at it. Continue Reading →
Army of the Dead
In the not too distant future, Las Vegas has become even more of its own world. A wall of armored shipping containers has sealed off the Entertainment Capital of the World. Sneering armed guards patrol a vicious hybrid of quarantine and refugee camp at the wall's edge. And on July 4th, on the orders of a dopey, malignant, unnamed president, Sin City will burn in nuclear fire. Why? The zombie apocalypse. Fortunately for the world, the plague of undeath was stopped in the sleepless city. With the zombies contained, Vegas was left to rot. But while the city crumbled, its infamous fortunes were preserved - sealed away in counting rooms, slot machines, and vaults. Why risk going in to retrieve it when insurance covers disaster (brain-eating or otherwise)? Because it's money. And that is the pitch Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) gives to haunted, lonely, zombie war hero Scott Ward (Dave Bautista).When Tanaka abandoned the Bly Casino, he left $200 million untaxable, untraceable dollars in its vault. If Ward assembles a team to go into Vegas, crack the vault, and retrieve the money, $50 million of the haul is his to do with as he will. Ward, a lost man searching for some sort of purpose and looking for a way to make things right with his estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), agrees. Ward gathers his crew - his war buddies Maria Cruz (Ana de La Reguera) and Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), bitterly caustic helicopter pilot Peters (Tig Notaro), zombie-killing influencer Mikey Guzman (Raùl Castillo), Guzman's warrior pal Chambers (Samantha Win), oddball safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and, at Tanaka's insistence, oily security man Martin (Garret Dillahunt). Kate, the mercenary coyote Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), and a loathsome guard called Burt (Theo Rossi) join them at the city proper. Continue Reading →
How It Ends
SimilarCube (1997), Cube Zero (2004), Maria Full of Grace (2004),
Shaft (2000)
Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein usher in the end of the world with a winsome indie comedy about seeking closure and reconciliation.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
Directed by husband-and-wife duo Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, How It Ends can be recognized immediately as a movie filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cameos abound, with each minimal character appearing on balconies, across the street, on the other side of the table. These interactions, despite any emotional connection or progress, end with a wave goodbye, air kisses, or any other touchless way of leaving a situation. As the film meanders forward, this oddness grows, as two people share a genuine moment of importance, only to walk their separate ways with no physical affirmation of that moment. Continue Reading →
Coming Home in the Dark
James Ashcroft's hostage horror is nought but bland, sour sadism.
Before the premiere screening of the New Zealand import Coming Home in the Dark, the festival programmer introducing it led off by admonishing viewers that the following film was “not for the faint of heart.” Of course, for a violent thriller appearing in the midnight slot at Sundance, such words are not so much a warning as they are a come-on designed to lure in those with more outre tastes hoping to find the next gory hit to emerge from the festival. Although the film is certainly gruesome enough, there is nothing here that average viewers will find to b that far beyond the pale. Instead, they are more likely to be put off by James Ashcroft’s hollow and increasingly tiresome exercise in empty sadism whose utter pointlessness is further underscored by its delusions that it is saying something profound.
Alan “Hoaggie” Hoaganraad (Erik Thomson) is a blandly pleasant-looking teacher who is off on a car trip with his wife, Jill (Mirama McDowell )and her teenaged sons Make (Billy Paratene) and Jordan (Frankie Paratene) to the coast. All seems perfectly normal until they, in the time-honored tradition of bad cinematic car trips, decide to stop for a hike and a picnic lunch. It is while completing the latter that they are approached by two men, the extremely loquacious Mandrake (Daniel Gilles) and the more taciturn Tubs (Mathias Luafutu). After a few minutes of vaguely menacing talk, Mandrake produces a rifle and the two interlopers are soon on the road with Alan and the family—at least what remains of it—as their captives. Continue Reading →
Outside the Wire
Netflix has really made a play in recent years to corner the high-concept action movie market: Extraction, The Old Guard, 6 Underground, Project Power et al. feel like they fill the algorithm's innate need to fill the John Wick-sized hole in the moviegoing public's diet. It's that sweet spot that Outside the Wire is unabashedly trying to fill: sci-fi concepts right out of Black Mirror blended with brutal, highly-choreographed fight sequences. The trouble is, despite (or, more precisely, because of) its military sci-fi premise, Mikael Håfström's (1408) latest crumbles under its own sociopolitical weight. Continue Reading →