7 Best Movies To Watch After Ed Wood (1994)
Thelma
“How could Zuckembourg let this happen?” Thelma (June Squibb) stammers at the police officer trying to make out a report. Though her loyal grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger), assures her that Mark Zuckerberg had nothing to do with this, someone needs to be held responsible. She’s been the victim of a scam, convinced to drain her bank account for a fake emergency, and now it’s payback time—literally. Writer/Director John Margolin’s Thelma is an endlessly thrilling action film that moves at its own speed. Clearly a loving student of the genre, Margolin uses the standard beats of an action film but on a much more senior scale. The chase scenes feel familiar; they just occur on mobility scooters. Working in tandem with the film’s composer, Nick Chuba, the filmmaker uses thumping action-thriller cues and whirling camerawork to give even the opening of a handicapped door a sense of life-or-death excitement. In some ways, simple falls are honestly more perilous for the 94-year-old protagonist. By using perfectly placed musical themes that feel archetypal to the action film, Thelma puts in her hearing aids like its Mission Impossible tech. Clearing pop-ups feels like hacking the mainframe. June Squibb sets the tone for the whole film, which appears delicate but still full of hardscrabble tenacity, just like her character. There’s no stopping Thelma when she has an errand. We can say the same of Squibb in every scene she’s in. Thelma begins the story as a victim, but by the end, Squibb has straightened her spine and takes aim at the resolution with full guns blazing. Though people are constantly telling her character that she’s fragile, Squibb is always the center of gravity, not pulling focus but creating an orbit for her colleagues to perform and find the space to play. Continue Reading →
Frankenstein
After catching Lisa Frankenstein this weekend, check out some of these weird & wild spins on the legendary tale. Now that we've all established that Frankenstein (or Fronkensteen, whichever you prefer) is in fact the name of the doctor, and his creation is just "the Creature," we can sit back and enjoy a revival in appreciation for Mary Shelley's landmark story that skillfully wove together body horror, science, and existentialism. Following the critically acclaimed Poor Things is Zelda Williams' 80s-set comedy Lisa Frankenstein, opening in theaters tomorrow, which acts as a nice appetizer before Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited adaptation on the story and Maggie Gyllenhaal's version of Bride of Frankenstein, both set for release next year. While often overlooked in favor of the cooler, sexier Dracula, there's plenty of media dedicated to Dr. Frankenstein and his creation, starting with James Whale's unimpeachable 1931 adaptation and its even better sequel, 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. It's been lovingly parodied (Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein), given a family-friendly treatment (Tim Burton's Frankenweenie), turned into a musical (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and even made into porn (more movies than you can possibly imagine). Here now are a list of some of the more notably unusual (and non-pornographic) takes on the story, offering gore, laughs, romance, or just general weirdness. Continue Reading →
Midnight
Sundance's Midnight section offers up a trio of films--My Animal, Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, and Talk to Me--with strong ambitions, if not always executions. The Midnight section at Sundance has always been interesting. It’s a collection of movies who's fates vary greatly. Some end up instant horror classics. Others immediately get lost in the ever-evolving landscape of modern cinema. This year’s lineup is no different. Although the selections featured in this dispatch vary in quality, each features something palpable and commendable. If you take a horror or queer cinema history class, one of the first things you learn is monster movies of the 1940s and 1950s were heavily queer-coded. Ghastly beings, from vampires to Frankenstein’s monster, were depicted as both dangerous and alluring, misunderstood yet manipulative. The werewolf is likely the best example of the queer monster of the era, traditionally depicted as hating their lycanthropic form and wanting to repress it as much as possible. Continue Reading →
Babylon
Babylon is a frenetic crash course in Hollywood history that plays fast and loose with most of its facts. However, it still paints a vivid portrait of Tinseltown from its birth to the behemoth it is today. You won’t find the meticulous and mind-boggling commitment to detail of Mank (most of Margot Robbie’s costuming looks more 2010s than 1920s). Still, director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle is less interested in getting everything right than translating that history into something an audience can feel in their bones. Continue Reading →
Day Shift
It’s fascinating to watch a movie that could have been made any time within the past 30 years. That’s not the same thing as “timeless,” I’m talking about a movie that just feels like the script lingered in development hell for possibly decades before finally getting made, with only the slightest bit of tweaking to bring it up to date. Netflix’s new horror-comedy Day Shift could have been made in 1996, 2005 or 2012, and the only thing that would need to be changed is the cell phone technology. Like a lot of Netflix’s original content, it’s polished, yet dull, with a budget that doesn’t explain how forgettable it is. Continue Reading →
Crisis
In the late '90s, pharmaceutical companies claimed that the opioids that they produced weren’t addictive, causing a spike in medical providers prescribing them. This claim was, of course, false, and the influx of people who became addicted to opioids has created a public health crisis that results in an economic burden of $7.85 billion a year. Even worse is the human cost. In 2018, 67,367 Americans were killed via drug overdose. Of that number 69.5% of those deaths were caused by Opioids- mainly synthetic opioids. Continue Reading →
Along Came Polly
Splat! In the first sixty seconds of Along Came Polly, Philip Seymour Hoffman eats pavement. Make that wax: his character, the self-absorbed Sandy Lyle, slips on the dance-floor of his best friend’s wedding, tumbling to the ground in classic slapstick fashion. Hoffman does a great drop, instantly putting a smile on my face – a smile that (unlike the actor) would rarely fall for the remainder of the runtime. Continue Reading →