Multiplex Madness
The Exorcist: Believer
⭐⭐
Genre: Horror
Director: David Gordon Green
Starring: Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Ellen Burstyn
That awkward moment when your Exorcist sequel's reviews are in the toilet and it still means it's probably the second or third best movie in the franchise.
I understand the temptation to try and franchise out the movie that is commonly ranked as the scariest movie of all time (it's not, but I'm also not a 70's kid, so my opinion is irrelevant), but historically, sequelizing The Exorcist has notoriously paid off for no one. Exorcist II: The Heretic was a disaster and the original novelist William Peter Blatty tried to adapt his sequel novel, Legion, into The Exorcist III and barely anybody heeded it any attention (though it does have some cult enthusiasm surrounding it). The most recent attempt was a prequel film, which producers hated so much that they tried to throw it away and refilm it entirely into Exorcist: The Beginning, which is one of those horror movies that is so bad that it's funny. Eventually they released the original footage as Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, only to have people collectively say "Yeah, this isn't good, but why did you make a worse movie instead?" Now Universal has reportedly paid $400 million (!) to Morgan Creek to create their own Exorcist trilogy from Halloween 2018/Halloween Kills/Halloween Ends director David Gordon Green. They could have given me that money and I could have told them not to and it probably would have been more fruitful. The Exorcist was lightning in a bottle. It was caught in a shifting tide as audience demographic was becoming less Christian dominated and more agnostic, and along comes this Christian-themed spook story of a man of faith sitting in a room with a little devil who just looked at him and is all like "Fuck you." That motherfucker hit hard. Then the rest happened.
Now we have a new movie with two Demon Girls. Double the fun? Interestingly, David Gordon Green does something none of the other sequels have tried to do and is trying to recreate that lightning in a bottle. It was either the smartest or the dumbest thing any of the other sequels did in that none of them tried to recreate the first movie, each opting to be their own beast. It took fifty years for someone to look at this franchise and say "Hey, let's do an exorcism." The fact that Green is the first to try almost feels like a bold move, and one can't say he doesn't come out swinging. One thing I like about Green's attempts at sequelizing classic horror, be it Halloween or The Exorcist, is that he's pretty adept at picking up the techniques that made these movies special. Probably my favorite segment in any of his horror movies is the 1978 prologue to Halloween Kills, where he recreates the cinematography and style of the original movie pretty much perfectly, and while the rest of his Halloween films feel like bolder pushing of Halloween's stylings into something heavier and modern. It feels like he's trying to apply that latter approach to The Exorcist, and some of it sticks but a lot of it doesn't. There are certain elements of that first film that he latches onto and just repeats more audaciously, such as single frame inserts to make the audience jump unexpectedly and second guess whether they actually saw something. But he does it bigger and more frequently. Some of them are neat visuals, but they're ineffective in how overused they are because he never lures the audience into serenity and springs them on them. He just does it and repeats. He then takes the opportunity to punctuate scenes with jump scares, which is probably expected in a horror movie, but not really the kind of horror I'd associate with The Exorcist. That's kind of what the experience of The Exorcist: Believer is, where it looks like The Exorcist, but pushed to the point where it doesn't feel like The Exorcist anymore.
There is good in the movie. The two demon girls are well casted and are properly creepy. Leslie Odom Jr. is a great lead for the movie, and his story of a man without belief seeing his child taken by the devil is certainly an interesting arc. It was good to see Ellen Burstyn, who probably could have made for a solid cameo, but they keep her for one scene too many, where she faces the two girls face-to-face and acts as some sort of priest. That's not who her character was in the original, but okay. It's things like that where I can recognize the intent of the movie, but it just feels wrong. The movie didn't make me a believer that The Exorcist should be a franchise.
Shelter in Solitude
⭐⭐
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Director: Vibeke Muasya
Starring: Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Peter Macon, Robert Patrick, Dan Castellaneta
A singing bar owner loses her tavern during the Covid pandemic, and takes up a job as a prison guard, where she bonds with a death row inmate. The strength of Shelter in Solitude lies with its talented cast, who play the roles with bravado, though I question the movie's thematic intent because it doesn't really seem to know itself. Is it about justification? That's the closest I can think of, because the film spends a lot of time trying to make a death row inmate at peace with where his life ended up. But even if that's the case, the movie asks us to empathize with characters who display limited empathy themselves. Siobhan Fallon Hogan's character mostly just bonds with Peter Macon's because she's a chatterbox, and while there is some charm to her relentless jabbering wearing him down, the built relationship is limited. Meanwhile the film also uses the pandemic as a backdrop recklessly. It has an opportunity to display dramatic downturn in the working class life struggle but chooses instead to seize the opportunity to crack a few mask jokes. The movie tries so hard, but its approach is crusty and broken. It doesn't even deliver a proper ending, throwing a dramatic climax in the audience's face then cutting to black, with little interest for what our characters might have taken with them from this story. It just peaces out. Even when it works, it's just a glimmer of sunshine on a gloomy day.
Art Attack
My Sailor, My Love
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: Klaus Härö
Starring: James Cosmo, Bríd Brennan, Catherine Walker, Nora-Jane Noone, Aidan O'Hare
After spending some time in Ireland in Flora and Son last week, we've got some more Irish swagger this week with the ageless romance My Sailor, My Love, which sees a housekeeper hired to take after a woman's depressed father who lives in solitude, only to have the pair fall in love. What the movie does very well is how it starts very soft and quiet, as there is an aura of silent resentment between the two characters portrayed through a thick level of awkwardness. The movie gets more verbal as it goes on, as the father softens up as he enjoys the company more and more, choosing to express himself more openly. The film also offers an interesting dramatic parallel between the father's life and his daughter's, who's personal relationship is souring while her father's is blossoming. The dramatic conflict begins to center on the two very different personal life placements after years of a relationship that has gotten colder with each passing day. The story evolves from being a story of elderly romance into one of people who want their needs to be seen, and the turmoil it can cause when they are neglected. The points of view between the characters can be a little abrasive at first, but the longer it goes on, the more they make sense, even if they seem needlessly cruel. It's a movie about misery and beauty and the hope that our eyes are wide awake to see the beauty that meets us even in our darkest moments.
The Royal Hotel
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director: Kitty Green
Starring: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Toby Wallace, Hugo Weaving
Two traveling companions take up jobs as barmaids in a remote hotel in the middle of the Australian outback, though they become more unsettled as time goes on by the bar's tumultuous patrons. It's probably reasonable to wonder what this movie is about for a good while, because its slow burn nature becomes ponderous. The film takes a while to get going, choosing to characterize its setting and, to a lesser extent, its characters. The movie isn't too keen on exploring who these girls are, instead showcasing how this surrounding makes them feel. The movie's theme becomes clearer as time goes on that it's about the uncertainty of a woman's safety surrounded by strange men, as the uneasiness tends to take hold as more predatory behavior starts to take focus and these girls start to disrupt the attitudes of men just because they are present. They're two newcomers in a position held by rotating young and attractive girls that are enthusiastically accepted by the drunk and lonely residents who live in a desert, and some men have "expectations" for that role. It's a look at the discomfort and internal anger in the center of a woman's life when they have no control over how they're seen.
Netflix & Chill
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Streaming On: Paramount+
Genre: Drama, Legal
Director: William Friedkin
Starring: Jason Clarke, Monica Raymond, Lance Reddick, Kiefer Sutherland, Jake Lacy
There is a slight bit of delicious coincidence/irony that that the final film from the late director of the original Exorcist hit streaming the same weekend as the latest Exorcist movie hits theaters. I wonder which was better. Hint: it's this one.
Based on a play that takes the court martial portion of the novel The Caine Mutiny and turned it into a legal stage drama, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial very much feels like a stage play. That's actually the thing I love about legal dramas, because they can take a stage play's shortcomings of dramatic gestures and waiting to deliver monologues and actually deliver them in a setting where they're required to function. These melodramatics are now the strength that glues the entire production together. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial can sometimes stutter as it just throws a camera into the actor's face and forces them to recite rather than act, but its something its cast can overcome when they start to show signs of struggle. Friedkin throws a lot of actors into the water without a life vest, and he's counting on them to know how to swim. Everyone is uniformly excellent, letting their inner stage thespian through, including another dearly departed member, Lance Reddick, in one of his final film roles before his passing.
Some might be a little disappointed that this film is rather low-key for Friedkin's last film, but his advanced age reportedly wouldn't have allowed the film to be any more expansive than it is (there's a reason this is an adaptation of the stage play and not a full Caine Mutiny adaptation), so much so that apparently another Academy Award winning director, Guillermo del Toro, was on hand to fill in if need be. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial doesn't offer up an underlining of the man's career, but it is instead a lovely little punctuation.
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
⭐
Streaming On: Paramount+
Genre: Horror
Director: Lindsey Anderson Beer
Starring: Jackson White, Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lind, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Samantha Mathis, Pam Grier, David Duchovny
It isn't October unless we get a shitty horror sequel. If you thought the new Exorcist was going to be it, Pet Sematary is back to say "Hold my beer."
Let's fucking GOOOOOOOOO!
I got to hand it to the Pet Sematary franchise, because, quality aside, everybody who touches this franchise is committed to making the most relentlessly bleak movies they can, packed with characters who learn the moral lesson to just give up on life because hope is always rewarded with suffering. But what can you expect from an idea that spawned from Stephen King's story about a two-year-old getting hit by a semi truck, dying, coming back to life, and trying to murder his family. Bloodlines is the fourth movie from this franchise, serving as a prequel to the remake film that feels like it came out a decade ago, but actually came out in 2019 but just feels like longer because 2020 alone felt like five years itself. Taking place fifty years prior, the film centers on Jud Crandall, last played by John Lithgow but here played by Jackson White, who is a young man desperate to escape his home town, but finds his exit complicated as the burial ground brings a deceased friend back to life. The Pet Sematary premise is probably one that can be explored beyond King's tale, though I'd claim that the attempt seem here is too light to really embellish it beyond anything King and those that adapted him already did. Without anything new to intrigue, the film just becomes a drab slog. At this point I'd probably look for thrills to win me over, but the movie largely doesn't have any. Maybe the acting can save it? No such luck. Most of the actors are going for melancholy, but they just come off as detached, like they're disinterested in the film's story. And it's not just one performance, either, which means this is a production flaw. The only actors who get out unscathed are the ones who have scenes that allow them to emote more colorfully, which happens to be supporting actresses Natalie Alyn Lind and Isabella Star LaBlanc. In fact, the highlight of the movie is a chase scene through a hospital between the two. They're the two shining stars of this movie, but the movie rewards them by doing its damnedest to drain their energy. And as the film's promising aspects circle the drain, the film loses any interest value it could have. Pet Sematary has never been a great franchise, or even a good one, but at least other movies in this series were something. Bloodlines isn't really anything.
Totally Killer
⭐⭐1/2
Streaming On: Prime
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Science Fiction
Director: Nahnatchka Khan
Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen, Randall Park
Great Scott! It's Back to the Future with a killer twist! A serial killer in a Max Headroom mask kills three teenagers in the 80's, then returns thirty-five years later for the one victim that got away. The final victim's teenage daughter just happens to have a friend with a time machine (like one does), and she travels back in time to 1987 to stop the killer during the original murders, and happens to bump into her teenage parents along the way. Totally Killer is in that Christopher Landon tradition of taking a beloved film (Groundhog Day, Freaky Friday) and adding a serial killer to it (Happy Death Day, Freaky). Back to the Future is probably one that Landon is kicking himself for not thinking of, but considering he was just hired to write and direct Scream 7, he's probably doing just fine regardless. Even still, if you love Landon-style comedy/horror, Totally Killer is worth a watch. It's not a perfect movie (but neither are Happy Death Day or Freaky, but I won't get into that), but it's very light, fluid, and entertaining. And doing a time travel slasher movie like this right now is kinda perfect, because it flings you back to the 80's, where this genre was at its peak. Though when you get into the nitty gritty of a movie like this, it sometimes indulges in its worst vices, such as meta commentary about its loopy premise (the film name-drops Back to the Future more than once) and over reliance on culture clash (a lot of jokes rely on applying political correctness to 80's teen culture). I think a movie like this can indulge itself like that, but it needs to balance itself out by forging ahead within its own identity, which is something a similarly pop culture self-aware horror movie like Scream was able to do (though Scream sequels struggle with). Totally Killer owes a lot to its meta, and I can forgive it for being a little in love with it. I just wish it was a flirtation rather than a full make-out session. Like the movie says, "Too horny! Too fast!"
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Barbie ⭐⭐⭐1/2
The Creator ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Dumb Money ⭐⭐⭐
The Equalizer 3 ⭐⭐⭐
Expend4bles ⭐⭐
The Nun II ⭐1/2
Oppenheimer ⭐⭐⭐
Saw X ⭐⭐⭐
New To Digital
The Equalizer 3 ⭐⭐⭐
The Nun II ⭐1/2
New To Physical
Prey ⭐⭐⭐
Talk to Me ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Coming Soon!
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