Thriller

Midnight Special: Bright-Eyed Boy, Phone Home

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jaeden Lieberher and Michael Shannon in "Midnight Special"

Alton Meyer is a strange boy. His nature and purpose are a subject of fierce dispute—some view him as the messiah, others as a danger—but there is no disputing his oddness. He has visions. He speaks in tongues. He has a knack for randomly uttering classified government information. And every so often, beams of bright blue light emanate from his eyes. This is not your typical eight-year-old.

And Midnight Special, the fourth film from writer-director Jeff Nichols, is not your typical movie. Exactly what it is, however, is harder to determine. Is it a science-fiction thriller? A magical fairytale? A parable of governmental interference? An admonition of cultish groupthink? Midnight Special carries hints of all of these, and its fractured, enigmatic identity is both tantalizing and, ultimately, dissatisfying. Its pieces are all strong—solid acting, impressive craft, moments of raw power—but it is so resistant to coherence that those pieces just sit in isolation, never coalescing into a compelling whole. It refuses to conform and ends up just being formless. Read More

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Eye in the Sky: Where Collateral Damage Is a Cherub, and Our Collective Soul

Jeremy BeckReviews
Aaron Paul in "Eye in the Sky"

Eye in the Sky is the kind of movie that seeks acclaim simply for existing. It is designed to ask thorny questions about geopolitical warfare in the terrorist age, to make you plumb your conscience and grapple with the inherent tensions between morality and security. It’s a noble objective—these are questions that we all should be asking ourselves, and our elected officials—but Eye in the Sky fails to execute its mission with the necessary nuance. It feints at complexity, but it is actually shrill, a didactic sermon that is less interested in probing than proselytizing. Ultimately, the only question it asks is this: “Are you willing to murder an angelic young girl just to stop a few terrorists?” Answer wrong, and ye be judged.

To be fair, Eye in the Sky takes its time before it sheds its camouflage of earnest inquiry. In its opening scenes, it hopscotches around the globe, introducing us to the various players who will take part in its game of philosophical purgatory. These include: Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a British military commander stationed in Sussex who is remotely overseeing an operation in Kenya; Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman, in his final onscreen performance), Powell’s superior who monitors the operation from London, in a roomful of anxious bureaucrats; Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi, in his first role since Captain Phillips), a Kenyan field agent providing ground support; and Steve Watts (Aaron Paul), an Air Force pilot in Nevada charged with manning the surveillance drone that gives the film its title. Read More

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10 Cloverfield Lane: Don’t Go Out There. What, Don’t You Trust Me?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman in "10 Cloverfield Lane"

Michelle is a runner. When trouble approaches, she takes off. This tendency toward flight makes her the perfect sufferer in 10 Cloverfield Lane, a tense, riveting thriller that filters hoary science-fiction and horror tropes through the lens of claustrophobic terror. It’s a lean and efficient film that takes place entirely in a single location, one that Michelle spends most of her time desperately trying to escape. Oh, and it might also be about the apocalypse; then again, maybe not. To Michelle, it hardly matters. When you’re trapped in an underground bunker, who cares about the rest of the world?

10 Cloverfield Lane opens with a brisk, eerie prologue, a near-silent montage that finds Michelle—you guessed it—on the run. She’s fleeing New Orleans after fighting with her fiancé—surely those reports on her car radio about rolling blackouts can’t be important—and though she receives a conciliatory phone call from him (his voice belongs to Bradley Cooper), she isn’t inclined to turn around. Instead, she keeps driving on a deserted two-lane road until WHAM! she’s the victim of a sudden car crash. And I do mean sudden. The collision, which director Dan Trachtenberg brilliantly intercuts with the film’s silent opening titles, is a heart-stopping moment, the kind that frays your nerves and rattles your bones. It is not the last time this sharp, merciless movie will provide a shock to your system. Read More

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The Witch: A Puritanical Walk in the Wicked Woods

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy in "The Witch"

Early in The Witch, Robert Eggers’s sly and skillful horror film, a man goes hunting with his 12-year-old son. They’re searching for game in the midst of a dark, ominous wood, but they also find time for some standard-issue father-son bonding. Only it isn’t quite standard-issue; when the man, William (Ralph Ineson), cautions the boy, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), against the dangers of sleeping too late, he solemnly intones, “The devil holds fast your eyelids.” That delectable piece of diction encapsulates The Witch‘s dual preoccupations. It’s a movie about the danger of religious fervor, but it’s also about communication—what people say (and don’t say), and, more importantly, how they say it. As the adage goes, the devil is in the dialogue.

The Witch, which takes place in the 17th century, purports to base its tale of literal and allegorical horror on actual period sources. To that end, the characters speak largely in early-modern English, which means there are a great many thous, haths, and dosts. (Even the film’s marketing materials get in on the act, treating the title’s W as consecutive V’s.) This requires a small act of translation on the part of the audience—not unlike when listening to Shakespeare, you have to actively puzzle out the characters’ speech, rather than simply absorbing it. This assumes that you can hear it; the film’s sound design picks up the rustling of branches and the bleating of animals, often compelling you to strain your ears to comprehend every flavorful morsel of colonial argot. Read More

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Room: Within Four Walls, Two Lives Unfold

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson, in "Room"

The boy lives with his Ma in Room. Not the room, not a room—just Room. To preface the proper noun with an article is to suggest the possibility of other rooms, different rooms. But there is only Room: Four walls, a ceiling with Skylight, and beyond that Outer Space and Heaven. That is all there is. That is the world.

A harrowing, heartbreaking drama from Lenny Abrahamson, Room is a film of many virtues—superlative acting, tender writing, enormous feeling—but its greatest achievement is immersing its audience into the boy’s state of mind, articulating how he perceives this tiny, cloistered space that is his entire universe. The screenplay is by Emma Donoghue, adapting her novel, which she wrote from the perspective of the boy, named Jack (portrayed on screen by Jacob Tremblay, in an astonishing performance). Her script is a model of economy and minimalism; she supplies Jack with a few quick voiceovers that concisely set the scene, but otherwise, she and Abrahamson simply drop you into this strange, unsettling place and let you puzzle things out for yourself. Read More

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