1190 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Hebrew (Page 56)

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. It’s been nearly 30 years since filmmaker Jonathan Demme made The Silence of the Lambs. Based on Thomas Harris’ terrifying followup to Red Dragon, Silence was originally slated for an entirely different director: Gene Hackman, who was also to play the role of Jack Crawford. Serendipitously, Hackman’s daughter read the book and discouraged her father from trying to get the movie made, and Orion tapped Demme—hot off his quirky hits Something Wild and Married to the Mob—to direct.  It wasn’t the first adaptation of a Harris work. Red Dragon had already been adapted by Michael Mann as the slick thriller Manhunter, with Brian Cox filling the role of Hannibal Lecter in what amounts to a glorified cameo. While Cox is a very fine actor, his portrayal of Lecter didn’t quite stick the landing. Enter Sir Anthony Hopkins. In what might be the greatest character introduction—certainly the greatest villain introduction—of all time, Hopkins’ Lecter stands perfectly still in the center of a glassed-in cell. There are no bars for this criminal. Lecter is instead taunted with the illusion of freedom, no doubt at the behest of his petty, ambitious warden, the deliciously revolting Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald). The role would earn Hopkins his first of four Oscar nominations, and remains his only win for Best Actor. The performance looms so large, you forget he shares only four scenes with Jodie Foster’s agent-in-training, Clarice Starling.  Continue Reading →

Ring the alarm next time a movie tacks “Blumhouse’s” to the front of its title. Is it a marketing tactic? Is it a sign of desperation? How about a warning to heed instead? Hell, is it all three? It might be a little early to tell, but it’s starting to feel like the latter. Continue Reading →

Force Majeure wasn’t one to spell itself out. It didn’t have a traditionally satisfying conclusion. Its morality was ambiguous at best. Hell, its most intimate moments approached its characters like an anthropologist looking at a family as a tribe. But while that informed the worldview of Ruben Östlund’s film, it also provided much of its style. Several scenes watched people from afar, the camera peeking through rooms only to see a fraction of the subjects in something close to a profile view. Continue Reading →

Netflix's sequel to To All the Boys I've Loved Before keeps the charm but loses some of its edge. Netflix's algorithmic approach to satisfying the needs of its many and sundry subscribers (and its willingness to pour untold millions of dollars into producing and distributing original content) often feels like they're fishing with a shotgun -- just spray and pray. But amid the field of mediocre teen rom-coms they've put out over the last few years (Tall Girl, anyone?), the streaming service struck gold in 2018 with To All the Boys I've Loved Before, a sweet, inclusive, effortlessly charming treacle that feels like if John Hughes had a 21st-century understanding of racial and gender dynamics, and the results were shockingly warm, inviting, and downright fun. Now, Netflix is putting out a sequel just in time for Valentine's Day, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and while the surprise is gone, Lara Jean's story holds onto just enough of its residual charm to entertain. Making a sequel to a rom-com is never easy; what happens after 'happily ever after'? Luckily, Jenny Han's bestselling YA book has two sequels (of which Netflix plans to make a trilogy), so there's a treacly blueprint to work from. As P.S. I Still Love You begins, perpetual wallflower Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and sensitive jock Peter (Noah Centineo) are beginning the furtive first steps of their relationship: going out on dates, showing each other off to their friends, and navigating the thorny question of when/how/if to have sex. The courtship period is done, now it's time to really find out of Lara Jean and Peter are meant to be together. This question is complicated by the arrival of John Ambrose McClaren (Jordan Fisher), Lara Jean's middle-school crush and one of the subjects of the clandestinely-mailed love letters that kickstarted this whole affair in the first place. He's smart, sweet, nerdy, and thanks to their mutual volunteer work at the local retirement home (populated by a spirited Holland Taylor as Lara Jean's carefree confidante), get plenty of time to meet-cute all over each other. Continue Reading →

Hulu's gender flipped, more diverse take on Nick Hornby's modern classic about entitled men-children has charm & heart. Nick Hornby has made a career out of the unlikeable protagonist, from the philandering Doctor Katie in How to Be Good to the selfish, womanizer Will in About A Boy. By far his most popular--and most adapted--role, however, is record store owner and emotional masochist Rob in High Fidelity. Rob is a self-professed asshole who is fun to watch because we’ve all known that guy. Some of us have been that guy. In Stephen Frears’ 2000 adaptation of Hornby’s novel, Rob is portrayed by John Cusack with a kind of self-deprecating air of vagrancy that some find irresistible.  Twenty years later, though, the world looks a little different. There has been a culture shift with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. It isn’t quite as appealing to watch a character like Rob Gordon continuing to fail upwards as it was 20 years ago. Audiences don’t have as much patience for the sort of nostalgia-driven entitlement that Rob and other male characters like him seem to thrive on. Labeling a woman as awful for talking a lot, forcing an ex to admit that she was “not quite” assaulted, or even thinking for a second that any of these women owe Rob an explanation is no longer quite so cute.  With that in mind, why make a newer, updated version of High Fidelity? There is a grimy sort of magic to people who really, really love music and who fall in and out of love because of (or maybe in spite of) music. Hulu’s ten-episode series asks, “Why the hell not?”  While Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka’s take on High Fidelity is new and fresh—at times a painful delight—it isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel. With its expert pacing, fourth wall monologuing and a protagonist covering real emotional pain with sharp observational humor and self-depreciation, it’s hard not to compare it to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s breakout hit Fleabag. Continue Reading →

Despite solid reviews, DC's latest putting Harley Quinn front & center struggles to find an audience. This past weekend, something rare happened. A live-action title based on a Marvel Comics or DC Comics property underperformed at the box office. Usually, such movies are bulletproof at the box office but Birds of Prey proved that not everything with the DC label on it is destined for box office glory. Opening to just $33.2 million, Birds of Prey came in severely under expectations this frame and scored the lowest debut for a live-action DC title since Jonah Hex. Among prior February openers, Birds of Prey opened just below the $33.3 million debut of microbudget horror title Get Out and also below the $34.1 million opening of last years would-be WB tentpole The LEGO Movie 2. Birds of Prey is gonna need some incredible box office stamina to recover in the coming weeks, and it feels practically assured at this point that the film will become the only the eighth 21st-century live-action DC Comics project to miss $100 million domestically, following in the footsteps of Catwoman and the two RED movies. Normally you can pinpoint an exact reason these kinds of blockbuster titles went awry, but in the case of Birds of Prey, it’s hard to see what lead to this opening. The marketing was distinct and emphasized the kind of elements (action & comedy namely) audiences look for in these movies, reviews were strong, February has always been a successful launchpad for comic book fare and Harley Quinn is an incredibly popular character. Perhaps it simply boils down to the fact that sometimes, a surefire success just doesn’t turn out to be as surefire as it seemed. At least Birds of Prey only cost $84 million to make, so the financial losses will be minimal. After all, it’s a tentpole title released by an arm of AT&T, a company so financially secure that it can more than withstand a million mild underperformers like Birds of Prey. Plus, Birds of Prey did score two genuinely impressive box office feats in its opening. First off, as near as I can tell, Birds of Prey is the first time in history a live-action film directed by a woman of color topped the domestic box office. It also joins a rare group of films (which includes The Birdcage) with queer lead characters that managed to open number one at the domestic box office. Continue Reading →

In detailing Pepe the Frog's journey from meme to monster, Feels Good Man charts the corrosive nature of creative ownership. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) For San Francisco-based artist Matt Furie, it was always just a frog. But for legions of people on the Internet, Pepe the Frog means so much more: a source of joy, a catalyst for hate, and a million things in between. Pepe's been around almost as long as the modern Internet; he caught on in 2005 when Furie uploaded his first digital comic about Pepe (part of the gang in his irreverent slice-of-life comic Boys' Life) to MySpace. It wasn't long before he took off, the frog's carefree, half-lidded expression becoming an avatar for a generation of disaffected, directionless youth finding refuge on social media -- and later, finding himself on the Anti-Defamation League's list of hate symbols. Arthur Jones, an illustrator and animator in his own right, wanted to chart the meme's descent from innocent mascot to icon of the alt-right, and Furie's Sisyphean attempts to reclaim his creation. In Feels Good Man, he manages to accomplish quite a bit more than that: Furie and Pepe become the poster children for the consumptive, corrosive nature of the Internet, and the complications that come from the democratization of art. Continue Reading →

John Carpenter’s tribute to campfire tales, initially a critical flop, is now a gold standard of tightly paced, bone-chilling horror. I was probably ten or so the first time I heard a genuine, told around a campfire ghost story. As it turned out, I had read the story before, but it sounded more effective being told out loud, with all the appropriate pauses and the comfortable beat of silence before the final jump scare. The story was so simple, told in under ten minutes, and it left a bunch of middle schoolers flinching at every snapped twig and cricket chirp for the rest of the night. John Carpenter’s The Fog, released forty years ago today, perfectly follows the campfire story structure: setup, slow but steady growing sense of dread and menace, misleading moment of all is well again, and then one last BOO! to ensure that the audience leaves the movie with the worst case of goosebumps they’ve ever had. Co-written with Carpenter’s frequent collaborator Debra Hill, while The Fog isn’t quite as effective as its predecessor Halloween, it shares the earlier film’s tight pacing and a villain (or, in this case, multiple villains) that always seems to be right behind you no matter how fast you run. The movie actually opens with a campfire story, told by John Houseman, in a tone that’s perhaps more serious than a movie about vengeful leper ghosts deserves, but works to its benefit. The scene was added in by Carpenter in post-production, after he was dissatisfied with his original cut. Houseman essentially explains the entire plot of the movie in less than three minutes, and the fact that The Fog makes valuable use of every frame of its ninety minute run time is a minor miracle. There’s not an extra ounce of fat on it, and it doesn’t need any. Continue Reading →

Jim Carrey returns as a kids' show host who stubbornly continues to choose goodness, no matter what life throws at him. Kidding picks up right where it left off in season one, with reality literally crashing in on Jeff Pickles (Jim Carrey). Season two follows the ever-moving cycle of conflict in Jeff’s life and psyche. Though no longer listed as a director for the series, Michel Gondry’s cool, icy tone (with plenty of gliding single takes) is still present. In this season, it's former Weeds showrunner Dave Holstein’s delightfully twisted sense of humor that gets to shine. The series fully embraces the absurdity of its circumstances and brings more laughs. Not to say the show is any lighter. Like Weeds, it brings the menace this season. It’s 2020; everyone's into ax play. When we last left Enlightened PBS Children’s Entertainer Jeff Pickles, things were going from bad to worse in every aspect of his life. His show was on permanent hiatus; his marriage, torn apart by the death of his son Phil, is in tatters; family estranged, and his identity is being pulled apart. All he had was the hope found in the felt-fantasy land of Picklebarrel Falls.  Carrey remains a consistent highlight throughout this season, making appropriate choices when conveying Jeff’s conflicted ethics. Jeff ticks and the wheels turn in his brain; it’s part of what makes him feel human. As the show embraces the comedy chops of its main cast, flashes of “Classic Carrey” are present and we can see that Carrey hasn’t lost his goofiness at all and that everything being acted for us is a choice. Continue Reading →

Shirley Jackson's story is brought to sumptuous Gothic life thanks to Josephine Decker and a typically-great Elisabeth Moss performance. If you caught Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell last year, you saw an unhinged performance, one bursting with rage, drug-induced confusion, and lots of screaming. Her role as a rockstar in flux should have garnered her more awards attention, but the film underperformed at the box office regardless of (mostly) critical acclaim. Director Josephine Decker’s new film should give Moss another chance at an Oscar nomination, portraying horror writer Shirley Jackson in Shirley.  Though the logline and summary indicate a biopic, Shirley ends up being much closer to a drama with tinges of horror laced throughout its 107-minute runtime. Based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell with a screenplay by Sarah Gubbins, Shirley follows the writer and her husband Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg) as they take a young couple into their uncleanly home, professor-in-training Fred (Logan Lerman) and pregnant Rose (Odessa Young). With the men spending the majority of their time at the local university, Shirley and Rose begin growing closer, as the former struggles to write her next novel.  As much about writing as it is about marriage, Decker’s film explores these interconnecting relationships with ease, creating tension when there is none, and pointing out frustration when it’s plain as day to see. Shirley rarely leaves the house, and enlists Rose as housekeeper-turned-apprentice, as the author starts writing a novel about a local, missing college girl.  Continue Reading →

The DCEU embraces its inner Bugs Bunny, and is all the better for it. If you'd have told me two years ago that not only would I be looking forward to a sequel (such as it is) to 2015's murky, execrable Suicide Squad, but I'd end up really enjoying it, I'd have banished you to the darkest cell in Arkham Asylum. To be fair, David Ayer's overstuffed, underlit supervillain team-up came right at the wrong time: the product of post-Avengers superhero mania, but amidst the polarizing reactions to DCEU's so-called 'dark, gritty' approach to superheroes, it was the victim of a compromised vision of what was undoubtedly a bad idea in the first place -- reshoots, changes in tone, a final cut engineered by the house that did the trailers, etc. The one bright spot though? Margot Robbie's semi-Gothic-Lolita reinterpretation of the Joker's moll Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), a brash, madcap figure imbued with scene-stealing energy by one of the greatest actors of her generation. Now, with Birds of Prey, Robbie's Quinn is given a vehicle worthy of her talents, a manically gleeful girl-power anthem that's just as energetic and irreverent as she is. As Birds of Prey (sorry, Birds of Prey: or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) begins, the Joker's broken up with Harley. Good, great, we hated Leto's version of the Clown Prince of Crime anyway, get rid of him. Luckily, Harley gets over him just about as quickly as we do, blowing up the Ace Chemicals plant, dusting herself off, and trying to start a new life as a bounty hunter/mercenary/thug for hire. But before she can get that business off the ground, she finds herself wrapped up in a scheme involving a secret diamond laser-encoded with the numbers needed to access a secret bank account with all the crime money in the world. (Not quite an uncut gem, but you get my gist.) Continue Reading →

Levan Akin's grounded, richly textured Georgian love story brims with dance and forbidden romance. “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman,” says a priest during a wedding homily, “but in these times of “globalization”, as they call it…” the rest is cut off, but the implication is clear: we were once strong and knew who we are, but ideas from the rest of the world have confused and weakened us. A common accusation made by homophobic countries is that homosexuality is an unwelcome import from Europe and America; as if queerness was an invasive species stowed away in Western media that's overtaking the native heterosexual population.  This tension between a traditional worldview pushing against globalization is the focal point of And Then We Danced, with its juxtaposition of traditional dance against a backdrop of a Georgia that's hungry for foreign products. The characters praise English cigarettes, dance to Swedish pop music, and fawn over anime posters all while wanting to honor their heritage. It's a tension that Levan Akin is probably familiar with, since the Swedish-born director is of Georgian descent.  Taking place in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the film follows Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), a young dancer vying for a place in the National Georgian Ensemble. However, his standing in the group is shaken upon the arrival of newcomer Irakli (Bachi Valishvili). Merab is frustrated by Irakli’s talent but finds himself drawn to the young man’s rebellious nature. As the pair grow closer, their growing attraction could put them in jeopardy.  Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For the month of romance, we celebrate the birthday of the late great Jonathan Demme, whose output was as eclectic as it was empathetic. Read the rest of our coverage here. Hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right? Not every director can be Ari Aster, knocking it out of the park with their feature debut. William Friedkin’s first film was Good Times, a comedy musical starring Sonny and Cher. John Landis’s was a King Kong rip-off called Schlock. James Cameron’s was Piranha II: the Spawning, which sells itself right there in the title. So let’s go easy on the late Jonathan Demme for making his debut as a director with the 1974 women in prison flick Caged Heat. You might think it puzzling that the future director of Silence of the Lambs and Beloved would start his career with writing and directing an exploitation film, but it was the early 70s, and women in prison movies were an overwhelmingly popular B-picture genre, with more than 25 released just between 1970 and 1974 alone (including the 3-D Prison Girls, which Roger Ebert reviewed despite one of the lenses falling out of his 3-D glasses). Continue Reading →

Ben Whishaw shakes off the shackles of Paddington Bear in Surge, an intense if meandering thriller about a man driven to the brink. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) "I am so. Fucking. TIRED!" shouts Joseph (Ben Whishaw), a twitchy airport security worker at the end of a long, aggravating day to a neighbor who won't stop revving his four-wheeler outside their apartment building. We don't know what kind of mental health history Joseph has, and Aneil Karia's propulsive thriller Surge gives us little to work on in that department. We're left to intuit whether he's had something off in his head for a while, or if this is that old Joker idiom about it only taking one bad day to turn a regular person into a maniac. But as the stresses mount, and Joseph responds accordingly to his frayed-wire madness, Surge becomes less interested in the whys than the hows of a man realizing the precarious nature of our social fabric, pulling gleefully at the threads to see if it unravels. Effectively a feature-length take on Karia's previous short Beat (which also starred Whishaw as a man on the brink), Surge is an exercise in taking our deepest, darkest impulses to their furthest conclusion. To watch Whishaw's Joseph in the latter half of this film is to watch an extended version of one of those scenes in a movie where a frustrated character trashes a room and flings things to the floor; there's a transgressive joy in it, and a deep sadness too. Continue Reading →

Dominic Cooke's well-crafted spy thriller doesn't try anything new, but boasts winning performances & a zippy plot. In 2019, the buddy-car film Ford v Ferrari became the clear cut favorite of dads across American and Britain. Using well-matched leads in Christian Bale and Matt Damon, James Mangold’s film became a critical and commercial hit, showing that fathers still have the power to put a movie into the green. It looks like there’s a new dad film of 2020 though, with Dominic Cooke’s Ironbark taking its rightful spot upon the beer-bellied throne.  Ironbark tells the story of Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a British businessman recruited by the government to become a spy-like courier in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Wynne agrees to keep this entire operation a secret from everyone, including his wife Sheila (Jessie Buckley), growing more invested and involved and spy-ish.  Flanked by one British operative Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and one American operative Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan), Wynne begins meeting with a Russian source named Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). Together, they smuggle nuclear information back into Britain and the U.S. in hopes of avoiding nuclear war, and eventually dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Continue Reading →

Florian Zeller directs a stunning feature debut starring Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Colman at the top of their game. First-time director Florian Zeller walked out on stage to rapturous applause. At least one-third of the audience attending the premiere for Zeller’s film gave a standing ovation inside one of Sundance Film Festival’s biggest venues, the Eccles Theater. The reason for this reaction? The Father, a stage play written by Zeller adapted for the screen by Christopher Hampton, starring Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman. Following father Anthony (Hopkins) and daughter Anne (Colman), The Father explores a man aging sans grace, and how his growing uncertainty affects his daily routines and biggest relationship. Playing out over an unspecified amount of time yet staying in only a couple of apartments, the film corners you, becoming smaller and more intimate as time goes on. The 97-minute runtime flies by, with Hopkins commanding the screen in every scene, becoming a vehicle for him to likely receive an Oscar nomination in 2021.  The supporting cast, including an incredible actor in Colman, serves as merely a springboard for Hopkins, who plays a man struggling to understand or realize his own increasing forgetfulness and incoming dementia. Hopkins’ performance is one of his best in the last decade, blowing his Two Popes role off the screen, and showing that he continues to be one of Hollywood’s finest actors. He rips your heart out over and over again, creating a character that feels too relatable for all of us that have family members living with pain over the age of 75.  Continue Reading →

This softer, gentler workplace sitcom from some of the "It's Always Sunny" folks is funny but not without some glitches. Workplace sitcoms have been an essential part of the television landscape for decades. Cast a bunch of talented comedic actors, give their characters various kinds of quirks, put them together in a work setting of any kind, write hilarious jokes, and boom-you have a fun, breezy way to spend 25 minutes.  Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day brought the workplace sitcom to depraved new heights with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Now, with the help of writer and Sunny executive producer Megan Ganz, comes their latest attempt at reinventing the sitcom wheel with Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet for Apple TV Plus. This time, instead of a dingy bar, the setting is a tech company that produces a wildly popular World of Warcraft-esque online role-playing game called Mythic Quest. It follows the daily tribulations of its employees, starting from the top with the egotistical CEO and game creator, Ian Grimm (McElhenney, bringing that Mac energy) all the way to the bottom with the lowly game testers and coders.   Continue Reading →

Jeff Orlowski's documentary about the effects and ethics of social media lacks enough emotional depth or practical solutions to work. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) Did you know that the Internet is scary? Don’t worry, you're about to hear it again. Did you know that companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google store your information in order to sell it to advertisers? Of course, but maybe it'll really sink in if you hear it one more time. And—just bear with me—were you aware that these companies are so fine-tuned that they can track how long you stay on one given page, post, or picture? Of course you did, but The Social Dilemma doesn't care about that. There are a handful of working parts to Jeff Orlowski’s latest documentary, but rather than make use of its potential to say something new, it simply sticks to the most basic information and fleshes it out with some good old fashioned fear-mongering. It's part regular doc, part dramatic reconstruction, and mostly an insipid polemic, which, when paired with its potential to comment on the ethics of privacy and social manipulation, comes off as a regurgitation of what's been said before. Continue Reading →

Netflix's adaptation of the Joe Hill comic series takes a while to get going, but hits a dark-fantasy stride by the end. For better and worse (but mostly better), Locke & Key imports the tone and feel of its comic book inspiration almost entirely to its TV adaptation.  Show creator Carlton Cuse has proven increasingly adept at helming smart, faithful adaptations for television from books (The Strain) and comics. For those unfamiliar with the source material by writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke & Key concerns the titular Locke family, who, after a personal tragedy back in Seattle, move east to a small Massachusetts town. There waits a large manor home, Key House, one that deceased patriarch Rendell Locke (Bill Heck) hated so much he left in the rearview and never spoke of to his family. His brother Duncan (Aaron Ashmore) has been left caretaker, but largely avoids the property even though he remembers very little of his childhood. The Lockes, though, are in need of a change, and Key House seems to be the easiest place to start. Unfortunately, they quickly find that the home offers much less refuge (and much more danger) than they ever expected. Part of Locke & Key’s charm is how closely it hews to the comics on which it’s based. It diverges here and there, but never in ways that existing fans will resent. In fact, they may appreciate how it gives the narrative a few surprises while maintaining what made the series so popular in the first place. It’s the rare adaptation that manages the feat of feeling like its source material while not simply being a retread. Continue Reading →

Anabel Rodríguez Ríos's documentary about tension in the small village of Congo Mirador is both singular and specific. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) As the night sky shines a modicum of light over the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador, the heat lighting begins. It’s a regular phenomenon too: a constant cycle of near darkness blinded by strobing curlicues that weave in and out of the clouds. Thus comes our first decent sight of the location. Mirador, located in the country’s northwest Zulian Region, bleeds from Colombia on its west to the Caribbean Sea on its northeast. The community, however, stands above Lake Maracaibo, which, ranks as one of the planet's oldest lakes at anywhere from 20 to 36 million years. It’s just recently that citizens have made it work economically and environmentally, but the once-thriving locale has begun to sink. At least, not according to Mrs. Tamara, whose allegiance to the Venezuelan government precludes any real worry about the area’s wellbeing. She sports posters Hugo Chávez on her wall; she collects dolls of the former president and displays them with pride. Continue Reading →

Oz Perkins' latest, unceremoniously dumped into January, is a revisionist Grimm story as atmospheric as it is thin. The original fairy tales documented by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were often bloody, dark stories. As time passed, and we decided that children were too fragile for the originals, we reshaped them into toothless Disney stories of romance and happy endings. And as society began to critique the passive nature of these saccharine protagonists, the 2010s gave us badass butt-kicking makeovers for our heroes, like Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  At the dawn of the century’s third decade, however, we see fairy tales leaning harder into their older, more folkloric elements, crafting stories that mine terror out of feeling decidedly old and out-of-step with our understanding of the world. It happened with The Witch, and now we’ve got Gretel & Hansel, directed by Oz Perkins (son of Anthony), which opts for an eerie atmosphere and a decidedly dark interpretation of its source material. The movie opens with one fairy tale framing another: Gretel’s favorite childhood story of a young child, beset by illness in their infancy. In a desperate bid to save the child’s life, her father takes her to a local witch. While the witch saves her life, she also gives the child the power of prophecy and witchcraft. As the child grows, so does her power and evil, until the townsfolk have little choice but to exile her to the woods. Continue Reading →