Review: Project Hail Mary

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Chris Miller and Phil Lord's "Project Hail Mary" is an amiable space adventure that boasts a solid lead performance by Ryan Gosling, a few mesmerizing special effects, and a mostly compelling, albeit challenging to explain, story about the attempts to save the Earth and universe from a decaying agent.

Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a brilliant guy whose slightly out-there theories and difficulty working with others has made him an outcast in the scientific community. Instead of pursuing a career in the field, we find him in the film's beginning teaching middle school.

Grace is approached by a government type (Sandra Huller), who tells him that a theory of his has compelled her to add him to a team of world scientists who are trying to grapple with an infection that has damaged the sun and could cause it to die in a number of years.

As a result, Grace finds himself on a ship with two other dead crew mates, whose demises remain a mystery to him, floating toward a planet some 11 years away that might possibly hold the key to saving the solar system. Somewhere out there in space, his ship comes into contact with another ship that also holds only one passenger - an extraterrestrial that looks as if it's made of stone that Grace ends up calling Rocky who is also the only survivor on his spacecraft.

The two form a quirky duo with the same mission of finding the planet with the possibly cosmos-saving materials on its surface to save their own planets. Grace finds a way to communicate that allows Rocky to be translated into English, although his grasp of the language isn't always top notch - he says "fist my bump" for fist bump and ends every question by saying the word "question."

While this partnership provides a decent amount of laughs along the way, it ultimately finds its way to a surprisingly moving place. Although Huller and some other supporting characters pop up during flashback scenes, this is mostly a one-man show and Gosling gives a lively performance. 

"Project Hail Mary" doesn't break much ground as a space adventure saga, but then again not every film can be "2001: A Space Odyssey." It's an enjoyable, funny, and occasionally moving film about finding courage in oneself for the greater good and the surprises found in connecting with others. 

Review: Undertone

Image courtesy of A24.

Ian Tuason's "Undertone" is a film that I admired and found effective, even if it ultimately felt a little thin and didn't excite me like some of the best examples of the horror genre that we've seen recently - "Weapons," "Sinners," or "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple," for example. The picture makes great use of its single location, it has an unsettlingly effective sound design, and utilizes negative space - also, it's legitimately scary at moments.

The elements that hold "Undertone" back are its story and characterization. The film jumps right into the action as Evy (Nina Kiri), a young woman living at home with her bedridden and ailing mother, and her friend, Justin (Adam DiMarco), who is only heard and not seen, have wrapped up their latest podcast. Their subject matter revolves around supernatural occurrences - often captured on video or audio - that Evy wants to debunk, whereas Justin seems to be more of the true believer.

We only learn a little about Evy as the film moves forward. She seemingly once had a drinking problem, though not much is made of that, and she seems to blame herself for her mother's deteriorating condition, although little is made of that either. Her mother (Michelle Duquet) is positioned on a bed in an upstairs bedroom with her eyes closed and never says a word.

Justin forwards to Evy a group of 10 audio files that were mysteriously sent to him. They appear to be documents of a couple who underwent some sort of supernatural occurrence. The man recording the files claimed that his wife was talking in her sleep and, to prove it to her, began recording her. 

The recordings become increasingly bizarre and frightening as they include strange, unexplainable children's chants and other noises. Justin increasingly becomes convinced that it all has something to do with an ancient demon named Abyzou, who is often blamed for miscarriages and infant mortality. 

Much of the terror in the film has to do with its sound design. Most of the sound we hear comes through Evy's noise-cancelling headphones, but she and the audience increasingly begin to wonder whether the sounds she is hearing are coming from the headphones or her own house. The filmmakers also effectively place Evy on the far side of the frame during a number of shots, leaving the viewer to glance into the darkness on the other side and wonder whether we're actually seeing something or if it's our imagination.

So, while "Undertone" is effective in its sound design and visuals, it often feels undercooked in its storyline. Much like the "Paranormal Activity" films, from which this one seems to have taken some inspiration, it's all about the plot and the scares, rather than building a story. Although Kiri is good as the lead, her character is underwritten and her motivations aren't particularly clear. 

This is a film that is effective for those looking to be creeped out a little, but not so much for those who want something more - which, in this current age of high-quality horror movies, isn't a naive expectation. 

Review: Reminders Of Him

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Now that Nicholas Sparks adaptations have seemingly disappeared, author Colleen Hoover has become the new go-to for soapy melodramas that often feature tragedies and ill-fated romances. The adaptation of her "It Ends With Us" was a surprise hit - and so was all of the legal melodrama that followed - while her "Regretting You" was released last fall and an adaptation of "Verity" is heading to theaters later this year.

The latest in the Hoover book-to-movie pipeline is "Reminders of Him," a modestly engaging story about a woman with tragedy in her past who returns home to try to start over again. The woman's name is Kenna and she's portrayed by Maika Monroe, arguably the scream queen of the past decade whose work in "It Follows," "Watcher," and "Longlegs" was impressive. She does a solid job here, although her character's (well deserved) gloomy nature here isn't a far cry from the bleak horror material that she previously tackled.

Kenna is returning home after a seven-year prison stint and hopes to meet her daughter, Diem (Zoe), who is in the care of her grandparents (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford). That couple wants to keep the girl away from Kenna, whom they blame for the car crash that claimed the life of their son, Scotty (Rudy Pankow). Both Kenna and Scotty had been drinking at the time of the crash, but we later learn that the scenario wasn't as cut and dry as most people, other than Kenna, seem to think it is.

Kenna slinks back into town and manages to score a job at a grocery store, all the while living at a cheap motel. She happens to meet Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scott's best friend who spends a lot of time with Diem and blames himself to an extent for not having been there for his friend. Ledger, who had been living in another city playing professional football before losing his career to an injury, is at first hostile to Kenna, although he warms to her and, as he learns more about the tragedy, begins to have feelings for her.

The trajectory of "Reminders of Him" is not likely to surprise you. It's pretty easy to see the plot developments from a mile away and it's filled with the type of behaviors and decisions that cause drama and only exist to further a film's melodramatic beats.

And yet, Monroe and Withers are convincing as the burgeoning couple that are faced with challenging odds - keeping their romance a secret, all the while trying to find a way for Kenna to convince her daughter's grandparents to let her into their lives. 

"Reminders of Him" is mostly an average film, but it's better than a lot of the Sparks adaptations that seemingly came out every other week some years ago. It's filled with gorgeous photography of the Wyoming locations in which it's set and it has two lead performances that are convincing. While I'm not sure that adds up to a recommendation on my part, there are numerous other films in this same sub-genre that are far less in quality. 

Review: The Bride!

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

I’m always pleased to see directors take wild swings, some of which connect (Darren Aronofsky’s unfairly maligned and kind of brilliant “Mother!”) and some of which miss the mark (Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” and Emerald Fennell’s recent “Wuthering Heights” adaptation).

Sadly, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s outrageous and visually stylish “The Bride!” belongs to the latter camp. It’s a movie with almost nonstop energy, although it clearly doesn’t know how to channel that energy into something coherent or captivating.

The film often looks incredible and there references galore – “Bride of Frankenstein” obviously and “Bonnie & Clyde” but also, strangely, “Young Frankenstein” during a scene in which the filmmakers thought it would be a good idea to recreate the famous “Puttin’ on the Ritz” sequence from Mel Brooks’ picture.

One must throw all sense of logic out the door while watching “The Bride!,” which is set during the 1930s, but features modern music and a hodgepodge of other styles and language that are drawn from other eras.

At the film’s beginning, a young woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) does some sort of work for a notorious gangster (Zlatko Buric) in Chicago. She gets a little rowdy at a club one night and two hoods (John Magaro and Matthew Maher) with whom she is sitting end up killing her. Somewhat unexplainably, the woman has been possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley (also Buckley), who pops up in black and white to speak to her.

Shortly thereafter, Frankenstein’s monster, known as Frank (Christian Bale), shows up in Chicago at the home of a mad scientist (Annette Bening) saying that he’s lonely and needs a mate. She helps him dig up the body of Ida, whom he renames Penelope, and brings her back to life. In the process, she spits up some black goo, some of which stains part of her face.

The two instantly find themselves in trouble after attending a speakeasy type of club, where Penelope is harassed by two men, whom Frank ends up killing. The two go on the run, with the newspapers reporting about the search for the “monster killers” and two detectives (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) on their trail.

“The Bride!” wans to have its cake and eat it too. There’s a musical number, some grotesquely graphic violence, elements of gangster pictures, a bit of horror thrown in, a romance (sort of), and some nods to other genres (Jake Gyllenhaal pops up as an arrogant song and dance man with whose movies Frank is obsessed).

This is not a film without context or ideas. It is made clear that Penelope is a woman who, having been created at the request of a man, has a fate that is seemingly not hers to control, that is, until she decides to start doing things her way. At the same time, Frank is not overbearing and abusive toward women as nearly every other man in the film appears to be.

During the course of the picture, the bride decides she wants to have agency of her own as do the film’s other women – Bening’s scientist and, especially, Cruz’s detective who exists in a world in which she isn’t taken too seriously by her male coworkers. At times, this material is promising – at others, a little too on the nose, especially during a scene in which Buckley shouts “me too!” over and over.

However, the film is all over the map thematically and the film overall feels disjointed. The manner in which Buckley, who’s the frontrunner for best actress for her powerful turn in “Hamnet,” was seemingly directed is a bit mind-boggling. At times, she speaks as the voice of reason, while at others she goes off on strange tangents in weird voices - during one scene she shouts numerous words ending in “mate,” such as stalemate or checkmate, while in another she does an extended Marlene Dietrich impersonation. Bale, on the other hand, veers from calm and collected to melodramatic shouting.

I’ll give the filmmakers credit – this is a movie with almost nonstop energy and a fair amount of chutzpah. It’s a picture that takes risks. Unfortunately, in this case, it’s not one in which the risks pay off. It’s one that’s destined to be a curio, rather than a picture with the lasting power of the numerous movies to which it pays homage.

Review: Pillion

Image courtesy of A24.

"To thine own self be true," Shakespeare once wrote - and while this command seems simple enough, standing one's ground and admitting aloud what one's wants and needs are might feel like an almost insurmountable obstacle. This applies to Harry Lighton's very funny, often fascinating, well acted, and occasionally moving "Pillion."

The film's title refers to the seat for a passenger behind a motorcyclist, which is fitting enough considering that one of the characters in the film is a gay biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgard) and the other is a shy young man named Colin (Harry Melling), who rides on the back of the bike behind the hulking man who becomes his lover as they ride to the latter's apartment time and again to spend the night.

The catch here is that the duo are in a dom-sub relationship. Interestingly, this is never spelled out or even discussed. Colin meets Ray at a bar where the former is taking part in an a cappella performance and is approached by the latter. They get together shortly thereafter while walking their dogs on Christmas Day, and Colin is expected to obey Ray's commands and perform oral sex on him in an alleyway.

When Colin is asked to spend the night, he is expected to cook dinner for Ray, serve him, and then sleep on the rug in front of his bed, while Ray sleeps in the bed alone. Colin is meant to be submissive to Ray's needs, and while the latter doesn't display cruelty toward the meek, younger man, he's brusque when the rules are questioned.

The scenario lends itself to a lot of humor, surprisingly, but the dom-sub relationship is not treated as the butt of a joke. One of the funnier scenes is when Colin's well-meaning and square - but honestly trying - parents (Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp) come outside to greet Ray on his motorcycle when he comes to pick Colin up as if they were going to prom. Even funnier is when Colin shouts out an awkward "thank you!" while leaving after having gone through an absurd ritual with Ray in which the two wrestle in butt-less outfits and Colin is humiliated.

But despite being a film with many laughs, "Pillion" takes seriously the theme that finding oneself and learning about one's needs requires experience - and that sometimes the relationships that give one the most aren't the ones that necessarily last. There's a scene late in the film in which Ray and Colin spend an abnormal day - at least, abnormal to their typical rituals - that is followed by a moment of genuine heartbreak and then a flash forward to a moment of self actualization.

Skarsgard gives an intentionally restrained performance as his character is inscrutable, but there's also warmth underneath his surface, especially during a scene in which he defends Colin's decisions during a dinner with Colin's family as well as during the aforementioned scene in which they spend a day away from their normal rituals.

Melling - whom most will remember as the armless and legless character from the Coen Brothers' "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" - is great as Harry, a man who is not so much repressed as he is painfully shy and completely unaware of what he wants out of a relationship. The film is often seen through his expressive eyes, displaying his wonder as he takes part in activities that he most likely would never have experienced had he not met Ray. 

"Pillion" was widely praised at last year's Cannes Film Festival and is the type of film that will likely find a larger audience based on word of mouth. It's often funny, but also sharp in its of observations of how people come to realize who they are and what they want. In its final moments, the film is surprisingly moving. It's one of the year's most memorable films so far.

Review: Scream 7

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Once upon a time, Wes Craven's "Scream" - which was scripted by Kevin Williamson, who has taken over directing duties here from Tyler Gillett and Matti Bettinelli-Olphin  - was a game changer, a relatively low-budget film that was to the horror genre what "Pulp Fiction" was to the movies in general just two years earlier.

The film's self-referential and meta nature - in which characters realize that they are living through a slasher movie and, therefore, know the rules, having grown up with such pictures as "Halloween" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street" - was praised for its originality and spawned numerous copycats, much like Tarantino's film did.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of that film with the release of "Scream 7," which has mostly made headlines due to its troubled production - the director quit after one of its new-generation leads was fired over comments criticizing Israel's treatment of Palestine and another quit shortly thereafter (possibly in solidarity).

Despite reviews that have been nearly as brutal as some of this latest entry's kills, "Scream 7" is not all that bad. The formula feels a little musty, but it's not the worst entry in the series - a franchise that, miraculously for horror movies, has yet to deliver an outright bad sequel. The film's first half is significantly better than its second, which becomes a bit rote and features what has to be the worst killer reveal in the series.

But it all starts out well with its cold open - a scene in all of the "Scream" films that is set apart from the rest of the action and typically features a character getting bumped off by Ghostface thereby setting off the killing spree - as two horror tourists played by Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph stay at the home of Stu Macher, which was once the site of two bloodbaths but has now been turned into a tourist attraction with ghoulish chalk outlines where people were murdered and memorabilia from the "Stab" films that have been based on the Woodsboro murders.

Shortly after those two characters are dispatched, we learn that Sidney Evans (Neve Campbell), nee Prescott, is operating a small coffee shop in a generic town, living with her good-natured cop husband (Joel McHale), and trying to navigate having a rebellious teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), who is named after Rose McGowan's character from the first film and has a boyfriend, Ben (Sam Rechner), who sneaks in her window just like Billy Loomis once did into Sidney's room.

Sidney has a neighbor pal (Anna Camp) with a slightly creepy son who is obsessed with true crime (Asa Germann), while Tatum's friends include characters played by Mckenna Grace and Celeste O'Connor. Just after the murders at the Macher house, Sidney gets a face-time call from none other than Stu (Matthew Lillard), one of the original "Scream" killers who died at the end of the original film. Sidney wonders whether Stu actually survived and is now taunting her and her daughter or whether someone else is using deep-fake A.I. to mask their true identity.

The attacks begin against Tatum's friends, and this latest "Scream" ups the ante on the gruesomeness - a character gets a knife in the skull at an agonizingly slow pace, another is disemboweled while swinging on a wire above a school stage, and a third is victim to what I believe is cinema's only death-by-beer-tap. Of course, the list of subjects is long - namely, all of the characters mentioned above as well as an employee (Ethan Embry) of the psychiatric hospital where Stu might possibly have been a patient.

Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) makes a great entrance with the Meeks twins - played by Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown - in tow, although they are sidelined later in the film as Sidney and her daughter face off against the Ghostface killers in their secluded, cookie-cutter town.

"Scream 7" has its moments, from its solid cold open to the joys of watching Campbell and Cox team up again. Lillard makes his moments count as Stu, who pops up in face-time messages to Sidney, while Gooding and Savoy Brown deliver some levity. The newer cast mostly exists as knife fodder, with May as the only exception.

But while this seventh entry in the series is not at the bottom of the list - my personal least-favorite was the fourth one - "Scream 7" easily features the worst killer reveal at its end. One character's motivation seemingly doesn't even exist, while another's is long, convoluted and not connected to anything else from the "Scream" movies.

The film tackles some thematic concepts in modern cinema as previous "Scream" films have - in this case, it's A.I. and nostalgia - but the one scene in which a character displays movie knowledge is quickly shut down by another. Overall, this is an OK "Scream" entry - not the worst, but far from the best. If anything, it's a series that still holds together due to its characters - while Melissa Barrera and Jenny Ortega are missed, it's good to see Campbell and Cox back in action.

Review: Psycho Killer

Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

A new serial killer thriller from the writer of "Seven" and "8mm" would seem like a movie of some intrigue, but unfortunately Gavin Polone's "Psycho Killer" is a mostly lumbering affair, much like its villain. It feels like a movie that is scraped together with pieces of other, better movies of this type as well as some lesser efforts (the killer's gas mask seems to be borrowed from the grisly and mostly unseen "Found").

The picture follows a young state trooper, Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell), who becomes obsessed with catching a killer who preys on those along the nation's highways and is known as the Satanic Slasher, whose name is more descriptive than it is creative. Her obsession started after she watched the killer murder her husband, also a cop, along a desolate stretch of Kansas highway.

The killer leaves satanic symbols in the wake of his murders and his trail seems to be heading toward a specific purpose. That, at least, is what Jane believes, though she's stymied at every turn by the FBI, which seems pretty bungling, whereas Jane appears to be unbelievably resourceful.

One of the problems with the film is that the Slasher, as portrayed by James Preston Rogers, isn't particularly compelling or convincing. His victims could probably hear or see him coming from a mile away as he's always stomping around in big, loud boots; he wears a radiation mask; he's about seven-feet tall; and has a voice so deep that it sounds as if it should be reading the scripts for movie trailers.

As Jane continues to track the Slasher across the country - a journey that begins in Kanas and makes its way to the east coast - the film begins to get progressively stranger. It all culminates with a bloodletting at a satanic orgy where Malcolm McDowell is acting as the master of ceremonies and everyone is eating boxed Chinese food. It then veers into a plot line that could best be described as "The Silence of the Lambs" meets "The China Syndrome."

Campbell, who was the lead in Zach Cregger's breakout film, "Barbarian," is good enough here as Jane, though she's stuck with some ridiculous dialogue - "go to hell, psycho!" - and her character seemingly exists only to seek revenge for her murderer's husband. But she still can't save a mostly mundane serial killer thriller that gets increasingly ludicrous. 

"Psycho Killer" was apparently stuck in development hell for years before it was finally released this week. That it is now finally seeing the light of day is, perhaps, only a cause for celebration for those who made it.