Drama

Labor Day roundup: Onslaught, Fall 2: Deadpoint, The Sun Never Sets, and Finding Emily

Jeremy BeckReviews
Adria Arjona in Onslaught; Harriet Slater in Fall 2: Deadpoint; Dakota Fanning in The Sun Never Sets; Angourie Rice in Finding Emily

Hollywood generally dismisses Labor Day Weekend as a dead zone—a dumping ground for thinly marketed fare that studios forgot to release in January. In its history, the holiday has hosted exactly one smash hit (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), while only two other films (The Equalizer 3 and Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake) have ever topped $20M for the Friday-Sunday window. This year was no different—the highest-grossing new release was By Any Means, which pulled in just $7.5M, and which I skipped on account of it starring Mark Wahlberg—but the September slate nonetheless provided a range of odd and diverse pictures. Only one is, y’know, good, but two others are at least worth seeing, and all four are conceptually worthwhile.

Onslaught. The only thing worse than the screenplay in Onslaught is the hairstyling. Adria Arjona, one of the most desirable women in the world, is afflicted with a tangled mane, suggesting that her survivalist heroine devoted all of her budget turning her mobile home into a roving armory and thus can’t afford a comb. Drew Starkey, the handsome actor who has recently engaged in steamy on-screen romances with both Daniel Craig (in Queer) and Anya Taylor-Joy (on TV’s Lucky), sports a blond mohawk that he appears to have trimmed with a cleaver. And Dan Stevens, who embodied aesthetic male perfection in I’m Your Man, is fitted with a frightening bald cap framed by tufts of white follicles. The movie places a handful of ordinary citizens in a nightmarish situation, desperate for deliverance, but what they truly need is less a savior than a barber. Read More

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The Dog Stars review: His Bark Is Worse Than His Blight

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jacob Elordi and his Belgian Malinois in The Dog Stars

It’s been five years since Ridley Scott made a good movie (The Last Duel), but that hasn’t stopped him from trying. Undaunted by age, the 88-year-old Briton keeps cranking out handsome, nobly ambitious period pieces: a biopic of a fashion designer (House of Gucci), a military epic about a tyrant (Napoleon), a long-awaited return to the Colosseum (Gladiator II). (IMDb currently assigns Scott to eight upcoming titles in varying stages of development.) Now he’s back (to the future!) with The Dog Stars, a somber post-apocalyptic thriller that’s temporally different from his recent work, but qualitatively similar. It occasionally approximates an interesting movie, yet it’s ultimately forgettable.

To the extent The Dog Stars resonates at all, it does so metatextually. Based on novel by Peter Heller (the screenwriter is Mark L. Smith, whose uneven résumé includes Twisters and The Revenant; Christopher Wilkinson receives a “writer” credit), the film takes place in a depopulated landscape whose remnants of civilization—dilapidated buildings swarmed by vines, highways littered with rusty cars—will appear familiar to viewers of dystopian fiction. But while the movie is appropriately spare with backstory—a virus spread, and people died—its fanciful premise is nonetheless unsettling, given that here in reality, our nation’s top health official is a worm-infested eugenicist whose mission is to eradicate vaccines. Earlier in August, the “sex purge” concept of One Night Only seemed less ridiculous than it otherwise might have; three weeks later, Scott’s vision of a world ravaged by a pandemic plays eerily like prophecy. Imaginary futures feel less distant than they used to. Read More

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The Odyssey review: The Call Is Coming from Inside the Horse

Jeremy BeckReviews
Matt Damon in The Odyssey

Nobody else could have done this. I’m not suggesting that no other contemporary filmmaker could have adapted The Odyssey, which seems to get remade in some fashion every few years, officially or otherwise. But only Christopher Nolan possesses the requisite combination of vision and hubris to remold Homer’s classic poem into a movie so tailored to his thematic, aesthetic, and moral concerns. For a quarter-century, Nolan has built a distinctive brand of scrambled timelines, breathtaking innovation, and cornball romanticism; he’s cultivated his own mythology. Now he has the chutzpah to bring his singular artistry to bear on the granddaddy of all myths.

The results of his herculean labor (sorry) are both expected and surprising. In terms of scale, The Odyssey is a monumental achievement—a huge, exhilarating work of relentless energy and unimpeachable technique. Such an accomplishment shouldn’t be taken for granted, but it was virtually axiomatic the instant the projected was announced. What proves more striking is the movie’s gritty humanity. It’s an epic yarn of pillaging and seafaring, of gods and monsters, but its grandeur is engraved with punchy writing and credible emotions. Read More

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Comedy Clang Bang: Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass; The Invite

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zoey Deutch in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass; Olivia Wilde in The Invite

An aphorism claims that, while dying is easy, comedy is hard. Writing about the genre is no less difficult. I’m not just talking about the peril of ruining jokes by explaining them. I’m also bemoaning the challenge of translating physical reactions—giggles, winces, hoots and howls—into descriptive assessments. The purest analysis of comedy is also the most tautological: The reason it was funny is that it made me laugh.

With the possible exception of horror (hello Obsession!), comedy is the format that most benefits from theatrical exhibition. Even as their quantity has dwindled (often migrating to Netflix), jokefests benefit from collective appreciation—the cascades of laughter that ripple through the audience. We may be sitting alone, but we watch them together. Read More

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Crime Pays in the Indie Thrillers Tuner and Carolina Caroline

Jeremy BeckReviews
Leo Woodall in Tuner; Kyle Gallner and Samara Weaving in Carolina Caroline

One of the pleasures of moviegoing is vicarious excitement—the thrill of experiencing something you can’t possibly attain in real life. I am not a professional athlete, an ingenious detective, or a vampire slayer, but cinema brings me closer to such larger-than-life heroes, even if it can also shade them with relatable humanity.

This is particularly true when it comes to crime—especially theft. As a rule-abiding office drone who hesitates before lifting extra paperclips from the supply closet, I’m personally unacquainted with chases and shootouts and scores, so I have a weakness for movies about robbers scheming to pull a heist. The past few weeks saw two independent pictures featuring blue-collar characters who discover a latent aptitude for stealing, a talent that brings them both prosperity and danger. If neither made a peep at the box office, well, maybe that’s because they’re still eluding society’s dragnet. Read More

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