Review: Ready Or Not

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Those looking for a little late summer cinematic bloodletting with a dash of politics who are disappointed that the controversial "The Hunt" - which features pissed off liberals hunting MAGAs for sport - was pulled from the release schedule will possibly consider Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's "Ready or Not" the second best thing.

In fact, it's most likely better. Rather than targeting Trump supporters, the film involves a "most dangerous game" type of hunt in which a young woman from a modest background who marries the scion of a rich family, whose stock and trade is games of various sorts, finds herself to be the hunted by the insidious 1-percenter family into which she has married.

There's a somewhat silly explanation for the scenario involving a past family's members dalliance with the devil. A pact was made and success was had, but now the family is required to induct all new members through a game. The person must pick a card - and most of the time, they end up with chess, checkers or something along those lines.

In this film, the unlucky Grace (Samara Weaving, whose strong performance carries the picture) picks hide and seek. In this family, the game is played with sharp objects and those who are hiding are trying to survive until dawn. If the family fails to kill her, well, that's apparently not an option.

Each of the family members have their own distinct traits - beau Daniel (Adam Brody) is the good son, while his brother, Alex (Mark O'Brien), is the more troublesome one, although those roles occasionally switch. There's also a sinister looking aunt with a constant scowl on her face, a man who married one of the sisters who spends much of his time googling Satanic pacts and other things, and Andie MacDowell as the family's matriarch.

The picture is, to quote Thomas Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. That's not to say it's not fairly entertaining - it is. Not quite scary, mostly due to the nonstop quips by characters, "Ready or Not" is mostly a showcase for Weaving, who is funny when she needs to be, vulnerable at other times and a great horror movie heroine.

"Ready or Not" explores class differences, but it's mostly concerned with its genre trappings. I obviously haven't seen "The Hunt," but based on the previous works of that film's director, I have my doubts that the film won't be anything other than being hit over the head with a mallet in terms of its social commentary. "Ready or Not" isn't overbearing about such things. It's a mostly fun movie with a strong lead performance and enough laughs to soften its often gory goings-on.

Review: Blinded By The Light

Image courtesy of New Line Cinema

Gurinder Chadha's "Blinded by the Light" wears its heart all over its sleeve, a move that occasionally risks being corny, but mostly comes off as charming.

This good-natured, albeit politically charged tale, tells the story of a young Pakistani man named Javed (Viveik Kalra) who lives with his working class family in the small British town of Luton in 1987, during the height of unemployment and Margaret Thatcher's reign.

Javed enjoys writing poems, although his factory worker father (Kulvinder Ghir) wants him to get his head out of the clouds and find a lucrative career. A Sikh schoolmate named Roops (Aaron Phagura) turns Javed on to Bruce Springsteen, and the young man is instantly hooked by the Boss' songwriting prowess and relatable tunes about dreaming of escaping one's working class trappings.

Javed is encouraged by an English teacher (Hayley Atwell) and British girlfriend named Eliza (Nell Williams), whom he impresses by singing a Springsteen tune to her in public, to seek a career in writing, even as he fears his father finding out about his dream. The picture is a quasi-musical in which its characters occasionally break out into Springsteen tunes, although they happen to be listening to the songs and singing along, rather than taking part in musical numbers.

This is what one would call a heartfelt movie. It's not shy in portraying emotions, and there are a few sequences in which it almost veers into being too cutesy - for example, a scene in which Javed, Roops and Eliza break into their school's radio station office, put "Born to Run" on the PA system and then run through the streets singing it.

But the Boss' music is put to good effect in chronicling Javed's frustrations about being stuck in his hometown with little chance of escape. When his father is laid off from the auto factory where he works, his future looks even dimmer.

Chadha's films often tell stories of immigrants living in England who have British best pals - in this one, Javed is friends with a New Wave-coiffed boy named Matt (Dean-Charles Chapman), whereas the young Indian woman who dreamed of playing soccer in "Bend It Like Beckham" was besties with a young Keira Knightley - and hopes of attaining lofty goals.

Much more so than "Beckham" did, "Blinded" has some strong political subtext underneath its surface. Javed and his family are constantly terrorized by National Front thugs - young British lads pee through the mailbox slot of one Pakistani family, and Javed's father is assaulted during an N.F. march. On top of that, Javed and his family are all forced to chip in and work during a period of economic downturn in Thatcher's 1980's England.

But mostly, "Blinded by the Light" is a rousing story about outsiders struggling to achieve a dream. The film's final scenes - in which Javed is forced to consider his family vs. seeking opportunity abroad - is a commonly used cinematic storyline, but the manner in which it is resolved during a writing contest in which Javed has been awarded is genuinely moving. This is a likable, well made movie with a good amount of great music, solid performances and a sizable amount of good will. It's a crowdpleaser, but in a good way.

Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Image courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

Richard Linklater's adaptation of Maria Semple's popular and uproarious 2012 novel "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" is an enjoyable enough, albeit minor effort for the filmmaker. Whereas his 2014 masterpiece "Boyhood" featured a deeply satisfying - both emotionally and as a work of art - dramatic take on motherhood, his latest film takes a more comedic approach, but with somewhat mixed results.

Semple's novel took an often hilarious approach to the concept of a fed-up woman walking away from her life, escaping a community filled with nosy, snobby soccer moms and a husband who believed her angst over her lot in life to be overblown. The novel was mostly from the point of view of Bernadette's daughter, Bee, and was often in the form of emails, texts and newspaper clippings chronicling Bernadette's disappearance.

In Linklater's film, the story is told from Bernadette's point of view, which mostly works, although her character's enigmatic nature is slightly stripped away. It includes some of the novel's funnier elements - a mudslide that damages her annoying neighbor's (Kristen Wiig) home and a virtual assistant named Manjula whom Bernadette believes to be from India, although it turns out that the person with whom she is communicating has a more sinister persona and purpose - even if the film never quite commits to playing the story primarily for laughs.

Instead, the picture chronicles the coming apart of a family mostly due to its three members - Bernadette (Cate Blanchett), her husband Elgie (Billy Crudup) and Bee (Emma Nelson) - not properly communicating. The drama mostly centers around Elgie's concern that Bernadette is cracking up, although he later realizes that it's due to her losing her artistic drive.

Bernadette had previously been a whiz architect in Los Angeles, where she designed a property known as the "20-Mile Home" that was lauded for its originality. However, a mogul of some sort bought the property and destroyed it, and in the process killed Bernadette's desire to continue working in architecture. She and Elgie moved to Seattle, where the film is set, and Bernadette spends much of her time complaining about how much she hates the city.

A few dramatic run-ins with Wiig's obnoxious mother-next-door and her clique, which includes Soo-Lin (Zoe Chao), Elgie's new assistant, convince Bernadette's husband that his wife is in need of an intervention. He hires a doctor (Judy Greer) to help stage the intervention, which is also attended by an FBI agent who is investigating the mysterious Manjula. Without giving too much away, Bernadette's flight leads the family on a trip to Antarctica, which Bee wants to visit for a project she is working on at school.

While Semple's novel included some key plot elements that are not in the film - such as an affair that results in a pregnancy - Linklater's film is a little tidier, therefore making it a little easier to wrap up at the film's end. In other words, there's not quite as much at stake in the film, and there never appears to be any hint that all might not work out in the end.

So, while "Bernadette" isn't as good as Semple's novel, it's mostly enjoyable due to Blanchett's convincing portrayal of a woman who has been stifled and stuck in a rut and Linklater's breezy direction. It's a minor entry in the overall body of Linklater's work - which has been especially good in recent years with "Boyhood," "Before Midnight" and "Everybody Wants Some" - but still worth a watch.

Review: Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

If the recent season of "Stranger Things" and the upcoming second half of "It" aren't enough of a fix for those seeking stories about ragtag groups of kids coming up against sinister, supernatural forces in small town America, and complete with period nostalgia, then "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" will be something to seek out.

However, while the prospect of the creepy stories and even more horrifying illustrations that accompanied Alvin Schwartz's iconic 1980s series of books coming to life on the screen sounds delicious, the film takes a very R-rated concept and stuffs it somewhat unconvincingly into a PG-13 movie.

While the books caused trauma for generations of children, the film just isn't that frightening. It has a few jump scare moments and some creepy imagery, but it gets nowhere near being as unsettling as the original books or their illustrations.

The picture is set in 1968, and we're reminded of such by constant clips of the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's presidential campaign flashing by on televisions, while Donovan sings "Season of the Witch" and the film's protagonists flee from some bullies into a drive-in theater, which is screening "Night of the Living Dead," all the more appropriate considering the film is set in a small Pennsylvania town.

Stella (Zoe Colletti), a fan of horror comics and movies, discovers a book of short, scary stories by a woman named Sarah Bellows, the black sheep of a rich local family from a century before, when she and her pals Chuck (Austin Zajur), Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Ramon (Michael Garza), a Latino youth passing through town who joins the group after saving them from the bullies at the drive-in, break into the Bellows' deserted home.

The group - which also includes Chuck's sister, Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn) and lead bully Tommy (Austin Abrams) - accidentally awakens Sarah Bellows's anger, and she responds by placing each of them at the center of a scary story in which they are terrorized by a specific fear.

At this point, several of the scary stories from Schwartz's book come to life - "The Big Toe," "Harold," "The Red Spot," "Me Tie Dough-ty Walker" and "The Dream," which is the best of the bunch. Surprisingly missing is the creepy "High Beams" and "Don't Turn on the Light."

One of the biggest issues with the film is that the individual stories work pretty well on their own - well, maybe not "Dough-ty Walker" - but they are at the service of a tired plot about a spirit seeking vengeance and tracking down one individual at a time, a horror trope that has been beyond exhausted. Also, as I'd mentioned, the movie just isn't that scary, and the dialogue is occasionally wooden and solely for the purpose of exposition.

For a mainstream horror movie, "Scary Stories" isn't bad - it's just overly familiar, something of which Schwartz's book could possibly have been accused if it weren't for the terrifying illustrations by Stephen Gammell. The film sets us up for a sequel - and should it come to that, I hope the filmmakers up the ante on the frights. As it stands, the picture is just another in a long recent line of movies about kids battling the supernatural in bygone eras, but with little to distinguish it from other entries to that sub-genre.

Review: The Souvenir

Image courtesy of A24.

Joanna Hogg's "The Souvenir" is a well made, if slightly distant, film about a whirlwind romance that turns into a toxic relationship when the picture's central protagonist, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), learns that her beau, Anthony (Tom Burke), has some deep dark secrets and cannot be trusted.

The movie has mostly received rave reviews from critics, and although I admire the film and believe it to be a good one, I wasn't quite as taken with it as others were. Perhaps, this is due to Hogg's approach, which is often emotionally removed from a story that is teeming with emotional distress. That being said, the picture is handsome looking and one's interest remains piqued as to where it will go.

At the film's beginning, Julie is a film student in early 1980s England who is in the process of making a feature film, but doesn't quite have a grasp on her subject. Her film is to chronicle the life of a young boy and his mother from the working class in a decaying town, although Julie's own background is upper crust and wealthy. Her teachers point this out to her to try to convince her to do something more within her comfort zone - or, at least, her own life experience.

She gets the same advice from Anthony, a man who works for the Foreign Office whom she meets at a friend's party, and appears to take his opinion more to heart. At first, Julie and Anthony's burgeoning relationship seems promising. They both take trips to meet each other's parents - Julie's mother is played by the actress's real-life mother, Tilda Swinton - and soon move in together, or at least spend the night together frequently.

But one day, a friend of Anthony's lets it slip to Julie that her boyfriend is a heroin addict. She puts on the appearance of not being shocked, but it's clear that she is. Then, Anthony begins to engage in reckless behavior, first ransacking her jewelry drawer and trying to play it off as if her home were burgled, and later allowing another drug user to hang out unattended in her apartment - a discovery she makes upon arriving home one day. During another incident, she finds Anthony upstairs, high on drugs with blood on his clothes.

"The Souvenir" observes how the functioning member of a dysfunctional relationship can make excuses for the bad behavior of their partner to try to convince one's self that such behavior is normal. It's about lying to yourself, so as not to be faced with the truth about someone you love to cover for their dysfunction.

As such, "The Souvenir" is often effective. At times, this seemingly autobiographical film seems chronologically fragmented and the performances are dialed down, often making the film feel isolating. It also relies heavily on anecdotes, rather than following what one might call a traditional narrative. Although it didn't grab me as much as it did many others, I can appreciate its craft and often found it engaging, even if it is slightly stand-offish.

Review: The Farewell

Image courtesy of A24.

Apparently "based on an actual lie," Lulu Wang's poignant and funny "The Farewell" chronicles a real life incident in the director's life. In the film, Billi (Awkwafina, proving she has dramatic chops) lives on her own in New York City, barely scraping by, despite having the type of New York apartment that only exists in movies, and learning early in the picture that she has been turned down for a writing fellowship.

Although her grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), lives in China, she and Billi are very close and speak frequently on the phone. Noticing that her parents seem downcast, Billi quizzes them and finds out that her grandmother's sister has recently been given the results of an MRI test that Nai Nai took, and she only has a few months to live.

But rather than tell Nai Nai, the family concocts a wedding for one of Billi's cousins, who lives in Japan, as an excuse for the family to all get together before she dies. Billi wants to take the trip with her parents, who are concerned that she will be too emotional and, therefore, give away the secret. But as it turns out, Billi is more emotionally stable than many of the other family members, who reflect on their own woes and occasionally squabble.

"The Farewell" is often funny - for an apparently dying woman, Nai Nai is full of zest - but also heartfelt, without laying either quality on too thick. And both Shuzhen and Awkwafina, whose relationship is the heart of the film, give memorable performances that anchor the picture, although the supporting cast is fairly impressive as well. In previous films featuring Awkwafina, the comedian and rapper has been more of a quirky supporting character (in "Ocean's 8" and "Crazy Rich Asians," for example), but here she proves that she is even more adept at weightier material.

There's an often interesting - and frequently amusing - battle taking place between the family members in the film as to which way of life is better - the East or West. Resentments have seemingly lingered among family members after Billi's father, a semi-alcoholic translator, moved his family to the United States, while his older brother took his wife and son - the one who's getting married - to Japan, thereby leaving another sibling to care for Nai Nai. There's a tense conversation in which Billi's mom grills another China-based character as to whether she will send her son to America to study.

Also debated between the family members is whether Nai Nai should be told that she will die - and, therefore, give her the opportunity to say goodbye - or kept in the dark, allowing her to live her final months in happiness and peace. Both arguments are convincingly made by various characters.

But for a film about impending death, "The Farewell" isn't particularly gloomy - often somber, yes, but not downbeat. It has what some might call a light touch, and manages to be moving without being overbearingly so. Wang is previously responsible for one other feature (unseen by me) and several short films. In other words, she's a filmmaker on the rise - and if there's any justice, her lovely sophomore film will allow her to do just that.