It’s been a bit of a whirlwind month around these parts, and yet, somehow, I managed to squeeze in a few movies. After one particularly trying day this last month, I made another solo venture out to the movies and treated myself to an old-fashioned (or, as this theater called it, a “grumpy old man,” an apt descriptor of my mood at the time). One thing I know about myself: there are few things that a good movie and a bourbon can’t cure. At least for a couple of hours, anyway.
Here’s a quick round-up of some of the most interesting things I’ve been watching and reading in the last month. One observation about the movies as a whole: I know we’re in a very odd time in the film industry, with the streaming wars and superhero cinema seemingly having peaked, but without Hollywood having fully emerged into whatever its next era is going to be yet. Work in town is punishingly slow for many of my friends in the industry, and I feel for them. But I will say many of these films and their fresh takes within familiar genres leave me encouraged that there’s no shortage of incredibly creative people with new things to say out there in the world.
All of Us Strangers, dir. Andrew Haigh
This has to be my absolute favorite of the bunch, and if there’s any film on this list I’d implore you to see, it’s this one. As lonely screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) begins a project that draws him back to his childhood home, he finds his parents, who had died in a car accident when Adam was 12, welcoming him back into their flat. Parallel to this, Adam embarks on a burgeoning romance with another kind but lonely stranger, Harry (Paul Mescal), who catches his eye in his London apartment complex. The mystery at the core of this film lends itself to a variety of explanations, but that’s all secondary to the movie's themes. All of Us Strangers is about the people we love and who love us and the way that love impacts (and haunts) us through time. As Adam reunites with his parents, he’s given an opportunity to unpack all of the things that were said or not, that happened or didn’t, and how they shaped the person he came to be. As a relatively new parent, it’s something I wonder about a lot. How do the little things I do today shape the future of my boy?
Ultimately, the film advocates for the power of presence and connection over all else. In one of my favorite lines of the film, Harry asks Adam if he got to say everything he needed to say. “It didn’t matter,” Adam responds. “We were together.”
Civil War, dir. Alex Garland
When I first saw the trailer for Civil War, my reaction was that it looked crass, on-the-nose, and exploitative. After hearing several effusive reviews from friends and critics alike, I opened my mind to seeing Alex Garland’s story of a group of journalists venturing towards the front lines of a second American Civil War. But I have to say - my gut reaction was right on this one.
The level of craft here is high—several sequences are incredibly startling and tense, and yet the film is not without a few warm character beats. Garland, however, deliberately obfuscates the political and social causes of this fictional near-future conflict so as not to alienate the viewer, but I think that choice is to the film’s detriment.
The French filmmaker François Truffaut said in 1973, “Every film about war ends up being pro-war,” but I think there’s been a fair bit of cinematic output in the time since that’s proved that sentiment false. When in Apocalypse Now Colonel Kurtz spouts a philosophy that suggests men are just animals without an inherent morality, the themes are enhanced by the fact the Vietnam War did little to advance American interests and instead wreaked carnage and devastation on the people of Vietnam. Or, to use a more modern example, in All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) we witness bright-eyed young men rallied to fight through effusive German nationalism, only to be reduced to husks of humanity through WWI’s grueling trench warfare. This is all to say, without Garland offering a greater context for Civil War’s conflict, all of the harrowing depictions of American-on-American violence in this film have little to say to me other than, “War is bad, and we shouldn’t want it.” To which I reply—duh.
Hundreds of Beavers, dir. Mike Cheslik
Look, when your friend texts you and asks you without context if you want to see Hundreds of Beavers tonight, you go with it, right? I had no idea I was in for a modern pastiche of visual gags that draws upon influences from Buster Keaton to Looney Tunes with a healthy dash of Adult Swim for good measure. Mike Cheslik’s tale of hapless distiller-turned-fur trapper Jean Kayak (Ryland Erickson Cole Tews) taking on an army of beavers in his quest for love and glory is in many ways my favorite kind of humor—simultaneously high-brow and low-brow, deliciously clever and completely inane. I was really glad to have gone into this one completely blind, as I don’t think there’s any modern equivalent trying to do exactly what it does, and that surprise left me and the rest of the rest of the theater in a state of tattered delight.
Late Night With the Devil, dir. Colin and Cameron Cairnes
Late Night With The Devil takes familiar horror elements like demonic possession, Faustian bargains, and cult rituals and remixes them into a found footage nightmare. The footage in question here is a lost 1977 taping of the fictional late-night show Night Owls with Jack Delroy. The standout here for me is David Dastmalchian’s performance as Jack. Usually when we see Dastmalchian on screen, he’s cast in the role of a strange outsider (like the spidery Piter Devries in Dune), but this role allows him to showcase his range. He shines as a talk show host, infusing Jack with not just the midwestern charm required of the part but an underlying sense of guilt, shame, and panic as more of the secrets of Jack’s past are revealed.
The creeping dread that permeates most of the film is probably more tense and satisfying than the ultimate payoff. Still, the film scores well for me for its flawless execution of period aesthetic and successfully re-synthesizing well-trod tropes into something fresh. As my friend Lee said after we saw it, “It’s a solid B movie. Maybe B+.”
Love Lies Bleeding, dir. Rose Glass
Rose Glass’s sophomore film is a greasy little neo-noir that finds gym manager Lou’s (Kristen Stewart) life upended when she falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder being slowly drawn into her father’s criminal enterprise. O’Brian’s performance as Jackie provides a fresh take on the femme fatale, the bombshell blonde subbed for bodybuilding brunette. As Lou falls for Jackie, she’s pulled out of the doldrums of small-town life in New Mexico while Jackie is thrust into the world of illegal steroids and gunrunning.
In true noir fashion, the story is full of fatalistic twists and turns as the stakes and passion escalate with each misstep the characters make. But the real surprise is Glass’s inventive use of on-screen body horror that parallels Jackie’s increasing use of PEDs. The stylistic flair through which we watch Jackie’s muscles inhumanly bulge and pulsate takes what is otherwise a “pretty good” movie and elevates it with its willingness to take some really big visual swings, especially in the film’s finale.
The Marvels, dir. Nia DaCosta
I caught up with this on Disney+, and you know what? It’s fine! It’s too bad this movie had to pay the price of the superhero-movie implosion because it’s far, far from the worst of Marvel’s post-Endgame output. Iman Vellani is funny and charming as Ms. Marvel. I think if this didn’t have as much distance from the first Captain Marvel film and if Ms. Marvel and Spectrum (Teyonah Parris) had been introduced in the films rather than Disney+ shows, this movie would be better regarded in the MCU pantheon. Plus, it’s a tight hour and forty minutes long, a refreshing relief from the punishing 2.5+ hour runtimes many other modern blockbusters have delivered of late.
Monkey Man, dir. Dev Patel
The universal reaction to the relentless action in the trailer for Monkey Man among my friends was to immediately draw comparisons to John Wick. While that may have been be a fair assessment of this film’s marketing, director and star Dell Patel infuses Monkey Man with a voice all its own. While John Wick tonally commits to the escalating absurdity of its unbeatable action hero, Monkey Man is a simmering ball of rage that tackles themes of class, poverty, and persecution of one’s identity. The tight, telephoto shaky cam doesn’t fit my taste, but I get what Patel is striving for in terms of capturing his hero’s frenzied emotional state as he seeks revenge against the people and institutions responsible for the death of his mother. While I might quibble about the pacing or the story’s ultimate resolution, Patel proves himself a capable director and action star. I’d turn up to see what he offers next in either arena.
COMIC BOOK BONUS ROUND:
But wait, there’s more! Buckle up nerds, because we’re about to talk about comics and Dungeons and Dragons in our bonus round—
DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, written by Kieron Gillen and art by Stephanie Hans
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I played my first tabletop role-playing game, which is surprising given imaginative play was my go-to as a kid. When left to my own devices, I would often pretend either myself or a hero in my army of action figures was caught up in an epic adventure. For the group of us that had gathered in 2020 to play a Dungeons and Dragons-like game over Zoom, it was a refuge from the early days of the pandemic, an opportunity to stretch our imaginations and connect with friends. (And, of course, drink beers and eat snacks).
While we were trapped in our homes, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ DIE asks what if a group of young friends had become trapped in the fantasy world of their imagination as kids, and what effect would that have on you as an adult? What I love about this book is that it precisely captures the experience of building an RPG world with your friends, which is to say that rather than building a wholly original mythology together, the domain of DIE is a collage of real places, pop culture references, and winking in-jokes. The other interesting question this book asks is that if RPGs are an opportunity to be any type of person you want without repercussion, what do those choices say about you and what if you had to face the consequences of those actions? The first volume of this series Fantasy Heartbreaker has me hooked and I’ll be following it to the slopes of its own amalgamated Mt. Doom.
Next Month!
Folks, sometimes life is a roller coaster and you just gotta strap in and enjoy the ride. If last month was a whirlwind, this next month is going to be tsunami. All I can tell you is I promise I’ll have something to say and do my best to make it interesting.