Where The Dialogue Begins
“Everybody wants to make and impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you’ve made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you’ve left a mark. You don’t have to bend the whole world”.
— Dorian Corey “Paris is Burning”.
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Written by Margaret Rasberry on June 17th, 2024
When Pixar President Jim Morris announced that Pixar was shifting from autobiographical films to features with “mass appeal” it sparked a bit of discourse in online spaces. The studio that began with a feature inspired by John Lasseter’s own childhood belief that his toys came to life, was faced with a dilemma that films with autobiographical elements such as Luca, Turning Red, and Elemental (disregarding that two of these features were released on Disney + due to the pandemic, and Elemental earning twice it’s budget back by word of mouth, would be lessened in favor of mass appeal films, with sequels to Pixars’ most valuable IPs leading the charge in the rebranding of Pixar, with Inside out 2 (dir. Kelsey Mann) being the latest in this controversial endeavor. Inside out 2 is hilarious in many facts, with its creative expansion of the function of Riley’s mind serving as frequent highlights of the film, and endearing with the rapport built around the emotions and Riley with her friends, I could not help but feel like I was watching a well-crafted rehash of the original film, with the same lessons recapitulate with a brand new character, and this is a slight failing on the part of the film.
Riley (Kensington Tallman) is officially a teenager, and her emotions Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Fear (Tony Hale) anticipating the next adventure in Riley’s journey to adult. The film sprinkles in a few tender moments with Sadness and Joy which conveys an endearing bond that has only grown more prominent in the two years since the original film took place. The plot begins when after Riley turns thirteen wrecking crew literally smash through the headquarters to enlarge the console with newer functions, an allegorical representation of puberty, with a literal puberty button loudly blaring. This heralds new emotions we have never seen before with Anxiety (Maya Hawke) leading the group consisting of Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) representing the newer developed emotions teenagers procure as part of their growth.
Not wanting to repeat her actions of the first film, Joy decides to let Anxiety take control for a bit, leading to the biggest conflict of the film as Anxiety hijacks the console and purges headquarters of Riley’s core emotions to the other side of her mind, and begins to unravel Riley’s core personality. Anxiety’s actions are compounded by Riley’s best friends and hockey teammates Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) going to a different high school. Leading to literal anxiety that Riley will be friendless in high school, unless she is able to impress the Firehawks hockey coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) and star player Valentina (Lillimar) so that Riley will be a Firehawk player her freshman year with guaranteed friends, regardless if she loses her middle school friends along the way. Joy and the others must return to headquarters to undo Anxiety’s actions and save Riley’s core before it is too late.
Effusively endearing in multiple fronts, with immensely creative scenarios,that in many cases, surpasses the original film, and exquisitely detailed animation that makes you feel like you’re on the ice with Riley and her emotions but with each new setup the narrative pulls us in, little setbacks on camera and off threaten to unravel it and keeps the film from becoming another classic of the Pixar canon. Not even the stirringly complex voice work of Maya Hawke can negate this pertinent issue. Take for example Disgust and Fear, whose roles are expanded from the original film and with the new voice cast unable to give the same vocal inflections as Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling, who the animators drew much from when animating the characters, you get the jarring sense of something being amiss whenever they speak. It’s akin to hearing Dan Castelleneta voicing the Genie in one of the subpar Aladdin sequels; an adequate substitute, but a substitute nonetheless.
Another setback of the film is the inability to have Riley experience a more accurate depiction of cis girl puberty, with less focus on the physical, and frankly, disturbing facets of puberty compared to just the emotional, which the superior Pixar film Turning Red (2022) was able to accomplish much better but considering how Turning Red was considered by some to lack “mass appeal” for this reasoning it can be surmised the lack of going further into depth of puberty beyond anxiety, embarrassment, and ennui was a result of this approach. Inside Out 2 is a joyous experience for many, including this critic, that cannot shed the affixed issues plaguing its repetitive narrative structure and behind the scenes drama that will continue to stain the very brand Pixar was meant to represent.
Grade: B
Written by Margaret Rasberry January 4th, 2024
Every release from Blumhouse should be approached with trepidation. The studio can produce genuine surprises such as the oscar winning Get Out, the wackiness of M3gan, the pulsating Whiplash, and the genuine chills of Cam, but as Blumhouse releases an average of 5-8 horror films a year, the desperation to keep releasing cheaply made horror films from burgeoning filmmakers culminates in releasing quite a few debacles in the past year, with Night Swim continuing the woefully pitiful trend.
Adapted from a mediocre three minute short film that is a blatant rip off of the original opening of Jaws, Night Swim stretches the thin premise of a monster swimming pool even further by recentering the film not on a distressed young woman but a suburban family moving into a new home in the suburbs. The patriarch Ray Waller (Wyatt Russel) is a former baseball player, whose career has fallen down the drain as a result of a diagnosis of Multiple sclerosis, and is left feeling emasculated as his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) becomes the sole breadwinner of the family, while his teenage children Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) find themselves assimilating into the new neighborhood, and with a seemingly wonderful pool too! Ray finds himself becoming distant from his weakly son Elliot as the pool is revealed to have healing properties, with his MS symptoms waning over the course of the film, while Izzie is courted by a crush to join the swim team, and Eve finds pleasure in the pool as she was a former navy brat who learned how to swim in a pool early in life.
Did I bring up the pool a bit too much, like it was clumsily forced in? I am just imitating how the film inserts pool references as subtle as a baseball bat to the face. The issue with Bryce McGuire’s handling of adapting his short film into a feature length film is that the connective tissue of the subplots added to the film need to carry resonance with the viewer. While watching the film, I was struck by the clarity of how disinterested McGuire was about the family at the emotional core and lazily ties together family dynamics that is disinteresting to watch, resulting in confused actors trying their best to deliver a fine performance on an uninspired premise. By the third act, I was becoming aware that McGuire began to realize this and wrote in quippy dialogue and tried infusing his film with slapstick to evoke the recent similar narrative structure of such features as M3gan and Malignant but the film treats the material so deathly serious that by the moment bathos is permitted that the viewer is adrift as what they are supposed to feel. The audience I watched it with gave desperate giggles, trying to evoke any sense of enjoyment in the final act that it became disarmingly lamentable.
Kerry Condon deserves so much better as she is the shining outlet of this whole dreadfully tiresome affair, trying with all her immense talent to save this picture to no avail. Horror films are a remarkable source of originality and engaging narratives, but we are saddled with shallow premises that waste remarkable talent in a genre that is ripe for genuine emotional impact, with Blumhouse’s last two features at least having the reasoning being adapted from two intellectual properties with creators who could not fathom developing a film that lived up to expectations, Night Swim falls beneath the watery depths of low expectations for original horror films.
Grade: D
Blumhouse Productions will release Night Swim Friday January 5th, 2023 in theaters.
Written by Margaret Rasberry October 17, 2023
A long tracking shot follows the ground as the score pulsates with percussive Powow drumming representing the budding oil deposits flowing underground ,courtesy of the dearly departed composer Robbie Robertson, until the oil rises from the earth, creating a geyser of black fluid which under the sunlight, is transformed into a golden hue, seen from an aerial shot. Liquid gold has emerged from the Earth, enriching the Native Osage people, and as they dance in the liquid gold, their bodies dripping with the black fluid, they have become like the oil, a resource for the Euro American settlers to exploit for their avarice and dominance of the land and its people. In 1924, US President Calvin Coolidge signed into law The Indian Citizenship Act the provided full citizenship to Native Americans for the first time, and it is in the shadow of this societal transition, where Indigenous Americans have abruptly become in Federal law, finally full citizens of their Native Land, and in this county, many of these members of the Osage tribe have become the wealthiest citizens of the United States, and Scorsese conveys this epoch with such adroitness, you feel you are witnessing history come alive before your very eyes.
When you watch a Scorsese picture, you are not just simply “watching” a movie. You are experiencing decades of a director constantly refining his craft before your very eyes. Scorsese and his team imbue every facet of his films with intensely crafted realism that adds to the verisimilitude of the picture, with racist iconography placed in the background of shots of insidious whites, from the old timey 1920’s reels that evoke the News on the March scene in Citizen Kane of Osage citizens riding in rollsters and adorned with the finest furs and brightest and cleanest adornments signifying their wealth, which will set the stage for the acrimonious dichotomy between the nouveau riche Osage people to the white settlers in the Osage county in Oklahoma during the early 1920s.
The film conveys the tragic true story of Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), an Osage native of Osage county Oklahoma, who has found herself as one of the wealthiest people in the country, with her mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) and sisters Anna, Reta, and Minnie (Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillion Dion) becoming the objects of conquest by white men in the county including Mollie’s eventual husband Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) a fecklessly obsequious former veteran hopes to ingratiate himself with his uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro) the self described Deputy Sheriff who proudly boasts of being friends with the Osage people, all while secretly consorting with Ernest and his brother Bryan to systematically wipe out the rich Osage people, including Mollie’s family, to steal their oil rich land, the consequences of which still reverberate. “This blanket is a target on our backs” Mollie conveys in one of her few inner monologues that punctuate the severity of being a member of the Osage people in the wolves den, as Mollie is strategically gastlit by her husband and his family, Gladstone imbues her character with engrossing paranoia in a heart wrenchingly superbly acted award winning performance.
Every murder in the film is palpable, as the film posits the pertinent family and communal bonds in the Osage tribe. American individualism is not more important than the tribe, a morality that is unfathomable to men like Ernest and William. When Mollie loses members of her family, a piece of herself withers for every member, a costly burden Gladstone carries with her in every scene. I could feel my furor watching as Mollie is endangered, Osage are killed, and every white person in a position of power knowing they will easily get away with it, as no authority responds to the Osage tribes’ pleas for help. “We never prayed for the great life, we just wanted life”, the chief of the tribe posists in the film, a sentiment that still resonates as Native Americans still face higher death rates than white people.
Providing a backdrop to this narrative is the investigation of the murders headed by the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, led by agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons), which forms the main plot of the book by David Grann, which Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth wisely chose to reduce for the main film as the true story of Mollie Burkhart and the murder of her relatives and friends is the focal point of this tragically neglected and buried part of American history. Tom White is no white savior, as Scorsese knows his audience is wise to these Americanised conventions, as he deftly deconstructs the white cowboy hero of Westerns, presenting White as an arbitrator of justice, with racial biases of his own.
Scorsese presents the true malignancy of racial injustice and prejudice lies not within racist individuals, but systems of power run by figures upholding white supremacist ideals kept in power by white apathy and antipathy of minorities by regular white citizens. Scorsese shines a light on the complacency of white individuals is what truly leads to the murders of these families. The apathy towards the history of Native Americans is a stain on America, and only now have we begun to truly scratch the surface of.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a revelation, with the over three hour runtime nevering feeling languidly paced, with every second counting towards the finely tuned narrative engagingly edited by long time Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker. Expertly shot by Rodrigo Prieto, with precise point of view shots and tracking shots submerging the audience into the world Scorsese has crafted, Killers of the Flower Moon is destined to be one of Scorsese’s crowning achievements to cinema history.
Grade: A
Killers of the Flower Moon is set to be released theatrically October 20th, 2023, courtesy of Paramount and Apple Originals.
Written by Margaret Rasberry on July 20th, 2023
Christopher Nolan has crafted a striking portrait of an enigmatic figure in history. Evoking the same techniques David Lean utilized in his own historical epic biographic picture Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Nolan likewise frames his eponymous protagonist Robert J. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) in shadow, the brim of his fedora constantly covers his eyes, the camera placed behind his back, forcing the viewer to only view Oppenheimer from behind, conveying an enigma that the film nor history truly has ever understood, an enigma with the intelligence and fortitude to have destroyed the world, and Nolan is only able to pull off this spectacular portrait was in the magnificent performance of his star.
Nolan presents Oppenheimer as an enigmatic man, whose viewpoints seem to shift towards left wing policies while also toeing the line of American nationalism. The figures around him try to decipher him through various board meetings, senate confirmations, congressional hearings shot in color and in chiaroscuro in others to subtly inject the crossroads of the internal conflict of the bomb. Color represents the subjective point of view, propelled by feelings,morality, and ideology while the objective enforces the facts or at least what was considered factual during the epoch. It makes every scene with the villainous Lewis Straus (Robert Downey Jr.) a reflection of his viewpoints, only able to see the world in shades of black and white. Realizing this technique unveils much of how Nolan wants the audience to view Oppenheimer, as a man of great profundity who is also willing to give into moral quandaries influenced by his study of other cultures, including the Sanskrit passage “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds”. Oppenheimer is more than just a physicist but was also a philosopher and Nolan and Murphy encapsulate that facet of him with great aplomb.
Alas these are the moments when the film clearly shines as the emotional impact is slightly obscured by Nolan’s tendencies to set up strategic flourishes with men discussing scientific advancements in a grandiose fashion. The woeful treatment of his female characters of Nolan’s pictures are also wholly intact with Florence Pugh playing Jean Tatlock,a girlfriend of Oppenheimer, who makes her underwritten role shine through the small amount of screentime given to her before her character is killed off to provide the first scarring event of Oppenheimer’s life that would shape his perspective on the incoming destruction he would inadvertently wrought later on. In real life Jean Tatlock was an adroit physician and psychoanalyst, a fervent communist party member and a woman grappling with her bisexuality in the 1940s, and was also unfairly targeted by the FBI with Nolan negating many of those traits in favor of Oppenheimer’s own plot development. The FBI in the film are only seen tracking Oppenheimer. Nolan with his propensity to promote centrist views in his features may have wanted to avoid vilifying American interference into suspected communist organizations and unions.
Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer does not fare much better, as Nolan places her as the alcoholic housewife unable to fully keep house while dealing with depression from her previous husband’s death fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Blunt also shines in this underwritten role but it still remains vexing to see Nolan force historical female characters as only truly mattering to his vision when they are giving emotional weight to his male protagonists either by dying or only adding additional heartache to his subjects at the expense of his female subjects.
The moral investment into the bomb is also emotionally vacant at times and is Nolan’s purpose as Oppenheimer is confronted by figures eager to unleash the weapon (which he notably refuses to call a bomb, opting instead for Gadget), with his moral objectives only wholly coming into fruition when the Trinity Test Run is performed. The Trinity scene is the most beautiful and harrowing scene in the film, that lights up the whole theater in a glorious spectacle that is at once awe inspiring and terrifying to behold.
Nolan never shows the real victims of the bomb, only having men discuss the vast amounts of people killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with over 200,000 killed in the blast and thousands more perishing from radiation sickness weeks, months, or years later, erasing the vast amount of suffering still being felt in present time as many victims of the bomb (known in Japan as Hibakusha) were isolated and left to suffer by the ignorance and selfishness of these men in the film, with our schools replete with propaganda still promoting the false notion the bombs had to be dropped in the first place. This notable aspect causes the film to suffer as so many Americans still feel the bombs were justified. Oppenheimer is a film that only wants to gloss over the morality of creating a weapon that destroys countless lives in an instant and that is the way Nolan wants it to be. Taking a centrist viewpoint over one of the greatest massacres in American history is the least surprising facet of the film. As I walked out of the theater in a daze after the three hour runtime flew by I remembered this quote from Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa “Human beings are foolish. Thanks to bigotry, religious fanaticism, and the greed of those who traffic in war, the Earth is never at peace, and the specter of nuclear war is never far away.” Nolan recapitulates that lesson in the final moments and forces audiences to perceive such godlike power in the hands of such foolish petty people, a palpable fear that no viewer will find easy to shake as the credits roll, and for all the films flawed moments, Nolan achieves something truly special, with great profundity, and wholly unforgettable in spite of it.
Grade: B
Notice: The WGAW and WGAE are on strike. SAG-AFTRA supports the Writers Guild of America in their fight to achieve a fair and equitable contract.
Oppenheimer was made in collaboration with the WGA and Members of SAG-AFTRA and this motion picture would not exist without the quality members of each organization. Support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in their fight for fair wages and benefits.
Written by Margaret Rasberry July 7th, 2023
Joy Ride is the rare cinematic feat we have been waiting for. Our media is replete with IP driven slop that conveys a strong undercurrent of cynicism for what constitutes as entertainment that is only driven to increase profit margins for shareholders as we have seen with the disastrous box office returns for The Flash and lukewarm reception to the latest Indiana Jones. In a culture replete with overstuffed and overhyped IP driven cinema, Joy Ride has arrived to provide the hilariously bold, raunchy,and cathartic summer film we have been missing since Girls Trip.
Joy Ride follows the trajectory of four friends Audrey (Ashley Park), Lolo (Sherry Cola), Dead Eye (Sabrina Wu) and Kat (Oscar nominated Stephanie Hsu), as they hitchhike across China to find Audrey’s birth mother to implement a business deal at Audrey’s law firm. What occurs is a hilariously raunchy road trip across mainland China and every worst case scenario ensues, with old school slapstick and replete with jokes every second that demands a second viewing. Remember when films did not have a five second pause after each joke so that every member of the audience got the joke and laughed?
Every character is fully realized with their own hardships with being a part of the Asian-American diaspora. Audrey is the most disconnected from her Asian heritage having been adopted by white parents and having been raised in white culture her whole life (her love of Taylor Swift and The National immediately pins her as practically a white girl in all but her skin in one memorable scene) and provides an assortment of issues as she has inadvertently adopted some of the racial prejudice white people hold towards Asian people, a flaw she has to work on throughout the narrative as well as constantly overcompensating for her perceived flaws as an adopted Chinese American. Lolo, Audrey’s best friend and her closest connection to her Chinese heritage in Seattle, Washington, is a pure slacker who puts more energy into her lewd art pieces than procuring a stereotypical career path which causes a strain in her relationship with Audrey. Dead Eye, Lolo’s non-binary faces stigma from not only their gender but with their obsession with k-pop and social awkwardness providing a lot of the film’s comic relief as well as genuine pathos as Dead eye struggles to connect themselves with the group. Kat is Audrey’s former college roommate and has become a star of a renowned Chinese drama with a loving, yet stringently Christian fiancee, while also harboring secrets of her salacious past from him.
Adele Lim, best known for writing the screenplays for the widely successful Crazy Rich Asians, and Raya and the Last Dragon makes a seamless transition to directing in her feature directorial debut and all the stars conveys stunning and hilarious performances with Ashley Park providing a stand-out performance as the lead, in a performance suffused with pathos that will resonate with everyone who has felt ever present sense of not belonging. Joy Ride provides the rarely seen narrative of the adopted Asian-American female experience which is ever present in the melting pot of America and had been a widely spread norm with the Chinese one child policy that ran up to 2015.
Joy Ride may discomfort some, especially the more prudish viewer, but for others who are willing to see and laugh at the jaw dropping moments that are infused with hilarity as well as genuine heart, then this is the summer film that is not to be missed.
Grade: B+
Joy Ride is now playing everywhere in theaters.
Written by Margaret Rasberry on April 27, 2023
In a landscape of unprecedented book bannings from conservative politicians and activists, it seems almost too fortuitous that one of the most challenged books of all time Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume, renowned for its frank depiction of burgeoning teenage female sexuality and religious ennui would finally be adapted to the big screen, and at the end of the American Library Association’s National Library Week, and it was well worth the wait. Kelly Fremon Craig’s sophomore feature is an effusively charming and sincere adaptation of Blume’s classic that is destined to be recognized as one of the best adaptations of the 2020s.
Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) has just felt like her whole life has been upended in 1970. Her father Herb (Benny Safdie) has been promoted which means moving from Manhattan to a suburb in New Jersey, while her free spirited second wave feminist mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) also struggles with the transition, having quit her art teaching vocation to become a stay at home mother, like many of the neighborhood mothers who capitulate to patriarchal order of 1950s white suburbia. Margaret is immediately inducted into the secret local neighborhood girl group headed by the snobbish and gossipy pre-teen Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham) who forces the group to reveal secrets to each other such as which boys they have crushes on, if they are wearing a bra (“We must, We must, We must increase our Bust!” becomes a mantra in order to develop chest area in hilarious vignettes), and when they start their menstrual cycle, leading to Margaret to feel pressure to develop sooner rather than later to fit in.
Margaret narrates her thoughts akin to diary entries to God by praying in multiple intervals of the film. The film establishes that Margaret feels disconnected from organized religion as a result of her upbringing. Her father is Jewish and her grandmother Margaret feels a deep rapport with Slyvia (Kathy Bates) wants her to grow up in the Jewish faith, while Barbara grew up Christian and was disowned by her devout parents for marrying outside their religious circles. Margaret’s various attempts to imbue her sense of faith lead to feelings of ennui as one prayer to god succinctly puts it “ Why do I only feel you (God) when I’m alone?” that is certain to resonate with many, as it did with me during my screening.
The emotional core of the film truly belongs to both Margaret and Barbara as Fortson and McAdams craft a cathartic bond as mother and daughter, with singular touching moments such as Barbara stroking Margaret’s hair and kissing her temple in the solemn moments that remind the audience of why we watch these films. Barbara also provides the secondary core element of the film in a role McAdam’s plays with such poignancy as a woman struggling to adapt to suburbia with her second wave feminist leanings placing her at odds with the other mothers, with highlighted hair reminiscent of Gloria Steinhem’s own famous waves providing a stark contrast with the coiffed hair of PTA president and Nancy’s mother Jan (Kate MacCluggage). Barbara’s plotline is expanded from the original book to convey that women are always coming of age or struggling to adapt to their environments and McAdam’s is terrific at finding that balance between sincerity and melodrama in this role.
It is heartening to see The Simpsons like James L. Brooks and Richard Sakai using their vast net worth to provide these opportunities to female directors to adapt these necessary and seminal texts for people without a fear of a loss of profit margins because Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a story that demands to be told, read, and now watched with the whole family. In a world where our cinemas are replete with remakes, reboots, the fatiguing Superhero fare and more, adaptations of famously challenged texts deserve recognition as these are the films that wholly encapsulate the human condition and that resonates with the viewer. And is that not what we all want in our art?
Grade: B+
Written by Margaret “Molly” Rasberry
Scream has arrived in New York City, and basically the same rules apply, as previous Scream films have pre established within its vast canon. Scream fanatics are young and old, much like the fanatics of the fictional meta texts Stab, and many of whom were not even born when the first film released in theaters in 1996 so to stay fresh and relevant, a franchise must be willing to evolve while also preserving the original trilogy’s heart and soul, so to speak, and be willing to discuss this very phenomena in its essential postmodern metatextual analysis that has become synonymous with the franchise and the latest film in the franchise is no exception.
Following the events of the fifth entry Scream (2022) (no numbers attached, roman or otherwise), the Carpenter sisters Sam and Tara (series standouts Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) have moved across the country to the fictional college campus of Blackmore University, (a fictional university that takes more than a few analogous references to Manhattan’s own prestige NYU, including having a reputable film school) with the Meeks-Martin siblings Mindy and Chad (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding) coming along as classmates as while as unofficial bodyguards for the young Tara. The film presents the sisters confronting the events of the previous film in dissimilar ways, Sam by attending regular therapy sessions while also keeping the ghostly visits from her deceased father Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) at bay, while Tara engages in unsafe practices to repress her trauma, unwilling to confront the reality of having survived Ghostface. The tensions between the sisters provides the emotional core of the film, but the relationship is still strained and people have been misled by social media to find the previous Ghostface Ritchie Kirsch (Jack Quad) an innocent victim of the murderous Sam, which harkens to real world serial killer worshiping of Ted Bundy and the Manson family, and similar bias in a very recent defamation case I dare not mention by name to avoid potential backlash. Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera have garnered a strong rapport over the past year and it is a stunningly affecting moment to see in a slasher, and what truly sets this series apart from other in the genre. Scream VI also conveys the explicit bias the internet algorithm perpetuates and I commend the film for this necessary message in our world consumed by the internet.
But much like Sidney Presscott (Neve Campbell) learned in the second entry, moving to a new state does not mean you can elude the danger forever. A new Ghostface has appeared and this one is willing to bend the rules, including disregarding his infamous buck knife for a sawed off shotgun in one palpably tense scene. The gore is amped up and multiple times I found myself wondering if the writers and directors are Lucio Fulci admirers with the intestines and eye stabbings, a staple of Fulci’s Giallo films. A reference to Giallo in the film as well as a poster of Fulci’s contested masterpiece, Zombie (1979) seems to support this conjecture. New York becomes an amazing set piece for many of the film’s most pulsating scenes, including one particular stand out in the New York subway, the multi color lights and darkness of the tunnels pays homage to a similarly disquieting scene in the 1971 classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and the impending dread permeates the sequence to chilling effect.
The ‘core’ four will need help to stop this new version of Ghostface which they find in Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney) and legacy characters Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who is still coping with the death of Dewey (David Arquette) and Scream 4 survivor turned FBI agent Kirby Reed who gives perhaps the most poignant statement for how and why the final girl, Sidney or Sam,have to survive, “I was tired of being afraid of the monsters, (so) I wanted the monsters to be afraid of me” Scream VI is willing to engage with this idea of becoming monstrous as well to fight the other monsters on equal footing and a vital staple of the final girl in the slasher genre.
The formula may have become stale to some, and I found myself wondering if the franchise would ever question why the formula exists in the first place, which would require more critical thinking than the characters and perhaps the audience is willing to engage with. According to some, the slasher boom was created as a form of backlash against women’s liberation and civil rights in the previous decades, and six entries in and the franchise is still unwilling to engage in that controversial legacy. That is quite baffling, especially since one of the main characters is now officially in a film program at the University, and the first victim is a film professor who studies slashers as a form of evolving trends throughout the decades. You can almost feel that the film will bring up that legacy of the genre but it seems unwilling to commit to it in fear of upsetting its fan base, which is a shame, and keeps the film from being truly great. Overall, it is a solid sequel and improvement over the last entry.
Grade: B-
Written by Margaret Rasberry January 5th, 2022
Imagine the audiences’ collective surprise when the Universal logo faded, a toy commercial was projected on the screen, advertising an almost unholy amalgamation of a Furby, a troll doll, and a Baby Alive doll that had all those features, including defecation, that your child controlled on an app so that parents would not have to entertain or play with their offspring. The commercial copies all of the essential aesthetics of toys commercials, from the bright colors, children smiling adorably at the camera and the toy, and quick cuts conveying childhood excitement, but the toy itself is jarring to watch that the audience feels unnerved by the childs’ unbridled excitement of that adorable monstrosity. This is the opening scene of the new Blumhouse picture M3GAN, directed by Gerard Johnston, and co-written by Malignant screenwriter Akela Cooper and James Wan, that is a remarkable summation of the film itself.
The film centers on the family of Gemma (Alison Wiliams), a roboticist working at the toy company Funki that makes toys powered by robotic AI technology, who finds herself the sole guardian of her recently orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Gemma is not a maternal figure the film quickly establishes as Gemma forbids her niece from playing with her action figure collectables still in the box, and has despondency issues with comforting or providing adequate parental boundaries for her recently orphaned niece. The company she works for, Funki, is established as being ironically run by parentless busy bodies, more concerned with profits and creating addiction in children through the apps the toys have to function on, than in actually engaging with children themselves on their level.
Gemma’s CEO David (Ronny Chieng), is more concerned with profit margins and having toys being less expensive to manufacture than Teslas, finding the replacement of parental human connections with technology part and parcel of working in a toy corporation. One night when Cady has a discussion with Gemma about her work, Gemma becomes inspired by her previous robotics work to finish her original prototype M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android) to become a playmate for Cady, while also providing her company the greatest technological toy on the market, powered by AI technology with a constantly updating server powered by the cloud.M3GAN becomes Cady’s playmate, singing SIA’s song Titanium in one hilarious jarring scene to calm her down, teaching her to flush the toilet, using a coaster and more, essentially replacing Gemma as Cady’s true guardian. As we have all seen with AI films, things go awry as M3GAN takes her instruction to protect Cady from all physical and emotional harm to a malignant degree.
M3GAN is not a grandiose statement against all AI or a luddite postulation as the film is a cheesy and fairly campy horror romp that follows the same beats as many other Blumhouse films, with jump scares and humor to balance out the bathos, but it does convey a core message that has become exceedingly relevant to our present culture of relying on technology such as addicting apps on iphones and ipods to entertain our children so much that they free the parent from their duties, which the film posits as a degradation of emotional connections adults and children need to function to our technology addicted world. Already a pertinent issue facing our children, but becomes more urgent when a traumatized child gains an addiction to an autonomous being made of wires and metal, instead of a flesh and blood relative.
A poignantly and surprisingly emotional scene the film presents is Cady begging for M3GAN, throwing chairs already, yelling and screaming for M3GAN. This scene is presented like a detox scene, where the addict is unable to function without their addiction, and as Gemma realizes, “M3GAN is not a solution, but a distraction”. M3GAN may not have set out to posit this message of addiction and technological coping to mitigate trauma, but the message is a vital and necessary one nonetheless.
The film’s humor falls flat at times and some may find M3GAN’s voice (Jenna Davis) grating at times, while others may feel restless waiting for M3GAN to enact her warped version of what protecting Cady entails as the plot can be languidly paced at times, but M3GAN rises above its campy veneer to deliver an assured and satisfying film that may endure in pop culture for a long while.
Grade: B-
Babylon is a Vulgar, Audacious, and Repulsive Film and Chazelle’s Best Picture Yet.
Written by Margaret “Molly” Rasberry, December 17th, 2022
1926 Bel Air, CA. Manny (Diego Calva) has been hired by an unknown Hollywood figure to transport the animal entertainment for one of the biggest parties for the Hollywood elite. A hilarious exchange occurs when the transporting vehicle is too small for the animal, an Indian Elephant. Manny’s ingenuity is established when he is able to put the elephant in the truck meant for horse transport. Damien Chazelle then sets the whole tone of the film when the elephant excretes its waste onto the camera, defecation spattering the camera. This is no La La Land. This is Chazelle’s repulsively vulgar love letter to Pre-Code Silent Cinema that miraculously manages to be one of the most engrossing films of the year.
Inspired by the gossip rags of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Manny, an immigrant from Mexico, aspires to become a part of the Hollywood machine, making movies and entertaining the masses, and becomes embroiled in a tumultuous relationship with aspiring starlet hopeful Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a send-up of silent film star Clara Bow, who crashes Hollywood parties in an ardent attempt to break out into the movies. “You either are a star or you aren’t” is Nellie’s arc phrase, which is repeated in the film, and Nellie seems like a perfect fit to Hollywood stardom, until the advent of sound and the difficulties of filmmaking becomes constrained by the limitations such as diction, restricts in sets, uncontrollable heat, and other issues hilariously conveyed through frenetic editing and hysterical dialogue delivered in the hammiest fashion by the fantastic cast.
Many intertextual references proliferate the film which is a pleasure to witness for scholars and old Hollywood cinephiles. Besides Nellie LaRoy being analogous to Clara Bow, Jean Smart plays tabloid journalist Elinor St. John, a supporter of Nellie and her burgeoning career, which mirrors gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who was an early proponent for the career of the original Hollywood “It” Girl Clara Bow. Even the moniker Nellie receives on her first day of filming is a send up of the “It” Girl label, which the movie stylized her as “Wild Child”. The most often discussed analogous character in the film is Lady Fay Zhu, a send-up of the first Asian American female movie star, Anna May Wong, played in a stunningly aching performance by Li Jun Li in a star-making performance. Both of these characters become ousted by the incoming Hays Code censoring for morality reasons based on queer, racial, and classcist restrictions.
The two other important characters who fill out the expansive cast include Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) , an aging film star reaching the end of his career, grappling with the inevitable decline as younger film stars such as Clark Gable are set to replace him. The requisite final player to fill out this ensemble is Jazz Trumpeter Sidney Palmer, analogous to the famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who must indulge racist whims to practice his craft in Hollywood becoming more conservative and dedicating to pleasing the white upper class.
It is a refreshing take for Chazelle to convey the loss of extraordinary talent because of conservative morals restricting the artistry of many, a moral coding we are still under in many cases such as Disney’s and Warner Bros. decades long disinclination to make any film with a Black or female superhero, and continual white washing of characters and veiling any queer character’s expression of their queerness to easily edit out for markets based in patriarchal, racist and homophobic norms.
Though Chazelle almost seems to miss the days of Pre-Code Hollywood, he restrains himself of this idea by conveying the 1920s Hollywood epoch not as a paradise of splendor and artistic freedom, but riddled with anti-union historical markers, with the accidents that inevitably ensue, and unbridled hedonism. Fornication, insemination, excretion, expulsion, laceration, and all manner of -tions occur in the film, and Chazelle’s rebuke of the sanitization of these elements is disgustingly bold and a laudable dedication to his craft. Babylon evokes the most provocative films of Ken Russell and John Waters during its entire three hour runtime with esoteric humor to match.
Babylon is not for the faint of heart. It is not for the sanitized Hollywood fairytale Chazelle conveyed in the critically and commercially adored La La Land. This is an unvarnished revealing look at the creative process in an often neglected part of Hollywood history. An unattractive part of Hollywood history, where people who did not fit into the heternormative White Anglo Saxon Protestant and educated mold the conservative class approved of were cast off to squalor or forced to mask their true selves for the comfort of these intolerant people. It is a commendable feat for Chazelle to shine a light on the hardships endured by the outcasts of society to be a part of the filmmaking process, and to convey it with such unbridled aplomb is a triumphant dedication to the creation of cinema itself.
Grade: A-
Paramount Pictures will release Babylon in theaters December 23rd
It was an absolute privilege to attend the lively Film Fest 919, founded by industry professionals Randi Emerman and Carol Marshall, one of the most poignant events in Chapel Hill, if not the entire state of North Carolina.
(Director J.D. Dillard and Producer Rachel Smith at the Premiere of their film Devotion (2022).
Here are my film takeaways of the festival starting from the premiere of Devotion (2022) to Women Talking (2022) on Day two of the Festival. *Minor spoilers*.
The 919 Film Festival opened with what many would consider a surefire crowd pleaser that did very little for me once the layers of saccharine sentimentality and sanitized war scenes were unmasked to reveal a very poorly crafted propaganda piece for the US Navy corps masquerading as a feel good bromance. The script falls into the trappings of trying to be so politically correct to modern sensibilities that the film wants you to believe the Marines were almost a bastion of racial tolerance in the 1950s except for a few microagressions. Jonathen Majors is the stand out of the film as Jesse Brown, the first Black man in the aviator program in the Navy, while Glen Powell is unfortunately sidelined in the woefully underwritten role of Tom Hudner. This is a film that depends on viewers to believe a fanciful notion that a proxy war is necessary and that joining the Navy will be a benefit instead of a form of being sacrificed for the military industrial complex. A fallacious propaganda piece that is destined to be used as a recruitment tool for future recruits, especially for young disenfranchised Black youth who will come to falsely believe that dying for their the United States (which continues to slide further back to Jim Crow era politics in present day) is a great honor and not the egregious tragedy it clearly is. Grade: D. Skip it.
The Quiet Girl (2022)
The Quiet Girl (2022) is an emotionally life affirming social drama that harkens to the works of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh in its evocation of social realism, and it is remarkable that this is the first theatrical film directed by Colm Bairéad. Bairéad masterfully directs first time actress Catherine Clinch (Cait) in a devastatingly heart wrenching performance that will tug at your heart strings. I found myself wanting to leap from my seat to hug the poor girl and affirm to her that everything will be okay. Thankfully, salvation comes in the form of her cousins who take the young girl in for the summer of 1981 Ireland, Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach (Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet). They pamper her, teach her how to work their farm, dress her, and give her the childhood she could never receive in her home a striking contrast that is conveyed with the color grading, as Cait’s rural Ireland home is shot in tones of gray, while the countryside of Ireland is awash in striking hues of yellow and orange, reflecting a rebirth for Cait . Another striking contrast is also the choice of language spoken, as Eibhlín and Seán always speak to Cait in her native Gaelic while her neglectful and brutish father Athair (Michael Patric) refuses to speak in the native Gaelic, always speaking in English, the language of the colonizers and Thatcher sympathizers. These minute details may be lost to many American viewers, but are there to enrich the experience and breathe life into this affirming story and combine together to make one of the most exceptional films of the year. A Quiet Girl was one of the winners of this year’s Audience award at the 919 Film Festival and a well deserved win overall. Grade: A-. See it.
Women Talking (2022)
Sarah Polley has Crafted One of the Most Devastating Portraits of Feminine Communal Grief in the Awe Inspiring Adaptation of Women Talking
“Without a language for it, there is a gaping silence, and in that silence is the real horror”, narrates Autje (Kate Hallet) and one of the youngest victims of the harrowing sexual violence perpetutated on the women, young and old alike, in the colony of which Women Talking takes place. They are led to believe they are being processed by demons for not praying enough or being following the duties said to be ordained by God in their community. The realization that it is not demons or possessions, but instead their male relatives and friends who have been tranquilizing them at night and viololating them strikes a harsh dissonant chord, the film cuts to the after effects of the attacks, blood curdling screams from the victims as they wake up with blood on their nightgowns, sheets, one even having a miscarriage and terrified as she believes shes bleeding to death, and shaking the very foundation of the beliefs of the colony. These despicable acts of violation upend everything the women and many of the men have thought to be the divine truth ordained by God and coming to terms with the fallout crafts the bulk of the narrative, which finds the Women conversing and voting on whether to leave the colony and all they have known For the first quarter of the film, the audience is then drawn to reality when a truck driver passes the colony playing a contemporary song, the creeping horror sets in for the audience that this act is not a part of a long forgotten beastly part of the past, but a part of the modern present.
The titular Women, with the main group consisting of Ona, Salome, Mariche (Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Jessie Buckley) are forced to choose whether to forgiven their rapists and be guaranteed a pathway into the kingdom of Heaven, or to refuse and be banished from the colony for life with the gateway to Heaven closed. Tension is spun into the narrative as the men of the colony have gone to the town where the assailants are locked up to post bail and will be back in a day or two. Only that short amount of time is granted the women to decide if they will leave all they know to settle into a new life to obtain safety for themselves and their children. The note taker August (Ben Whishaw) is the notable exception to the colonies’ male population, being portrayed as sensitive and never trying to talk over the women. His presence provides an excellent counter balance to the true toxic men of the colony, and provides hope to the women as he grew up as part of the outside world of the colony.
The book upon which the film was adapted is based in the harrowing true case of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia, but Polley wisely chooses not to name the colony as part of the Mennonite faith so that the audience will not ascribe a certain religious belief system as being inherently sexist or capable of producing monsters upon hapless women. Every society whether, advanced or not, is capable of producing men who indulge in toxic masculinity, drawn towards perpetuating horrific acts against the innocent female, male, trans and cis, because if they are taught to dismiss their feelings, its much easier then to dismiss the feelings of others. Instead of leaving the audience feeling despair about the human condition, Polley gives the audience hope in the communal friendship and families that come together to comfort each other in the face of the evils of the world. Grade: A-. See it.
More Film Festival reactions and reviews will be incoming in the next few weeks so make sure to check back to see my reactions to the upcoming features.
Mollywood Reviews