-
VENOM: THE LAST DANCE Ends The Trilogy On Its Own Terms
The ultimate superhero odd couple goes out how it came in: odd, sincere and singular.
Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock/Venom in Columbia Pictures VENOM: THE LAST DANCE. Within the world of superhero films, the Venom franchise has always been something of a black sheep. It was the launch of Sony’s attempts to make their Spider-Man films, sans Spider-Man, and was initially met with mostly tired shrugs. In a world where we were absolutely overrun with superheroes on movie screens, the first Venom always felt like an also-ran, a cheap knock-off of the glitzy prestige of the franchises that ran the box office. A little too shaggy, a little too off kilter and self-serious to really feel like a tent pole. They became something of a punching bag of the superhero bloat problem.
But there was always a core fanbase (including my wife) for these movies that embraced them, especially Tom Hardy in the dual role of the titular Venom, the symbiotic alien entity that bonds with living hosts, and Eddie Brock, the hapless investigative journalist who Venom finds himself attached to. While the rest of the films may feel a bit slack compared to other capes and tights flicks, Hardy was always clearly locked into something special. It is a career-defining role for a guy who was always on the just the outside of being a marquee talent. And at the core of the films was an anarchic buddy movie wanting to bust out. Even with the louder and less coherent second outing, Let There Be Carnage, Hardy as the center of the film always held. It was special chemistry of role and actor that both seemed made for each other.
The Last Dance is the newest, third outing for Eddie and Venom, and as the title suggests, it appears to be the end of their journey together. (Of course, we have heard these kinds of statements before.) But if this is where the story ends, it goes out on its own terms: strange, chaotic and filled with well-earned sweetness.
Just like the Eddie and Venom dynamic itself, this is a clear product of passion and friendship: first-time director Kelly Marcel takes the helm of the franchise, after serving as screenwriter for the first two installments and being championed by Hardy for the directing roll. Hardy as a story credit of helping craft the form of this final chapter. And it maintains all the heart and oddball goofiness that draws some in and pushes others away. In many ways it is the purest, best version of what a Venom movie should be, but if you aren’t on that wavelength yet, this likely won’t convert you.
Last Dance opens with a re-hash of the disjointed Spider-Man: No Way Home post-credit sequence, and more or less rolls the story along from there. Eddie and Venom are on the run after the events of Carnage, with no money and no real path forward. They decide to just get away to New York City, but that is complicated on two fronts. One, scientists and the military assigned at Area 55 (the secret actual extraterrestrial lab below Area 51) have been researching the other symbiotes that arrived with Venom, and are trying to track down Venom now as they see him as the key to understanding the mysterious aliens. Chief among these are Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) who survived being struck by lightning while he twin brother didn’t, and Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a no-nonsense soldier who is wondering if the symbiote-research is worth the trouble.
These characters are introduced via an early scene that is heavy-laden with the stiffest comic book dialogue imaginable, chugging along as they speak in endless reems of exposition. It is an early worrying sign that the film isn’t quite tapped into the magic the franchise is best at, but luckily that doesn’t drag the movie down. Rather, it just takes these characters a while to get into the rhythms of the larger narrative they find themselves in.
Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in Columbia Pictures VENOM: THE LAST DANCE. photo by: Laura Radford
The other threat is far more cosmic: the god-like creator of the symbiotes Knull (Andy Serkis in what amounts to a cameo role) has released monstrous symbiote hunters that look like the bugs from Starship Troopers but toothier, to hunt down the Catalyst, a key within some symbiotes that will unlock him from an eternal prison. Venom of course carries the Catalyst, meaning the hunters and Area 55 are now in a race to collect him, when both Venom and Eddie just want to be left alone. Thus we are set in motion for a Southwestern tinged adventure for the titular hero.All of this is settled in pretty briefly, with the first act of the film working as establishing stakes, the middle section (the strongest) giving Eddie and Venom time to reflect on their crazy lives together, and the final act giving way to the inevitable big fight. None of the film is especially surprising; it doesn’t so much foreshadow its next movement as roadmap them for the audience. But the magic is in that middle section, when the movie slows down some to give us genuine pathos for Venom and Eddie as characters. For as intentionally silly and broad as the movie can be at times (there are giant vats at Area 55 labeled “HYPERACID”), there is a sincere heart at the center. Most that comes from Hardy; when Eddie/Venom (Veddie? Ednom?) isn’t on screen, the movie loses some steam, but never terminally. Perhaps he strongest portions deal with Eddie’s interactions with Martin (Rhys Ifans) as an alien obsessed hippie who is dragging his family on a roadtrip to Area 51. Eddie’s melancholy of seeing a domestic life that was denied him, in part due to his bonding, draws out a genuine sense of empathy and pathos that is lacking in less curious superhero films.
Perhaps the most welcome surprise is how well Marcel equips herself as a director. The film balances it’s tones well for the most part, save for some of those exposition heavy scenes. But the action is always legible while still remaining chaotic, and the quieter moments are given the space and intimacy to feel effective. Like most of The Last Dance, there is a clear gulf between the emotional heart and the whiz bang action, but Marcel nails the former and doesn’t fumble the latter. It is a pure expression of the oddity.
And that is ultimately what has set a Venom film apart: they march to their own beat, dance to their own tune, and to a degree this final chapter underlines that remarkably well and puts a potential bow on the trilogy. There are strange detours that lead to nowhere, but it never fully loses its heart on the journey. It is perhaps one of the least cynical major movie franchises currently, and that has to be worth something. -
Movie Review: THE SHADOW STRAYS
A New Martial Arts Action Spectacular from the Director of THE NIGHT COMES FOR US
No one keeping up with modern action cinema will be surprised to learn that The Shadow Strays, the new film by Timo Tjahjanto, is a masterclass in limb-snapping, skull-pulverizing, blood-geyser-ing (totally a word) cinema. Tjahjanto wields brutality like a painter does their brush, amazing and delighting his audience with his seemingly limitless ideas for how to reduce nameless goons into puddles of red meat on screen. While The Shadow Strays perhaps never quite becomes the cinematic endurance test that Tjahjanto’s masterpiece The Night Comes For Us did, it nevertheless exists in that odd intersection of action/horror that Timo has made his home base.
But while anyone turning up for another buffet of blood and bullets will be happily rewarded by The Shadow Strays, now on Netflix, what amazes about the new film is less its capacity for carnage (which is, again, apparently inexhaustible) but its command over quiet, calm, and character.
Tjahjanto long ago proved himself incredibly adept at building relentless cinematic rollercoasters. What’s perhaps most surprising, then, about The Shadow Strays is that this is a movie that does relent, that forces the rollercoaster to a standstill to instead dwell on sorrow and loss in a way that doesn’t distract or detract from the martial arts pandemonium but instead enriches those kinetic elements. Strays has blood to spill in abundance, but it also has an aching soul and a heart that refuses to stop beating no matter how often it gets broken.
The gauntlet gets dropped right from the jump, with Tjahjanto kicking his epic off with a twenty-minute sequence that functions as its own short story. We’re told in text about a secret organization known as ‘shadows’, a clan of highly trained assassins that never fail a mission. No one knows who hires them or what agenda they serve, only that whoever they target ends up dead, no exceptions. In the prologue, we watch a single ‘shadow’ sneak into a heavily fortified hideout and decimate the guards inside with enough spraying fountains of gore to make Kill Bill blush. And just when you think the set-piece has exhausted itself, the operative is compromised after a moment of compassion for an innocent bystander and a second ‘shadow’ intervenes. With a machine gun. That’s the kind of intervention ninja-assassins deal in.
Right from the get-go, Tjahjanto undercuts his own malevolent sense of play by prefacing the bloodbath with the main henchman stepping outside to take a call from his young daughter, who wants to know when her dad is coming home. In the grand scheme of the movie, this character objectively does not matter. He exists only to be the point of view character to bring us into the facility and establish the situation and layout before the shadows break in and start repainting the interior with head-splatter. He will not survive past the twenty-minute mark, and even so Tjahjanto stops the movie cold to underline that this is a person with a life that is going to evaporate for reasons they probably don’t understand at the hands of two people who definitely don’t know why they’re doing it. Even the nameless characters have names in Timo Tjahjanto’s films, and this film is shot through with a sense of melancholy that so many are going to die with those names unspoken.
But the movie proper kicks off when the cool ninja armor comes off and we discover that the sword-wielding super-killer is a teenaged girl known only as 13 (Aurora Ribero, who by all rights should be a movie star after this). Her mentor in ninja massacres is Umbra, (Hana Malasan) who is none too pleased that 13 allowed concern for an innocent bystander to distract her from the mission.
13 gets ordered back home, a crummy Jakarta apartment where she works out, takes identity/trauma-dampening pills, and religiously checks and re-checks a secret payphone that will eventually spit out a new target. While she waits, she happens to notice the drama happening next door, where young Monji (Ali Fikri) is trying and failing to protect his pregnant, drug-addicted, sex worker mother from the nefarious types that populate the desperate corners of the underworld.
When Monji himself disappears into that underworld, 13 launches a one-woman crusade against the dealers, the cops who protect them, and the politicians who protect the cops. Tjahjanto has steadily become a master at quickly and efficiently creating cinematic scumbags you cannot wait to see get their bone-structures rearranged by a protagonist’s fists and feet, and The Shadow Strays never runs out of avatars to embody the various layers of corruption and vice that choke a city and force people into lives of grubby subservience.
“Repentant assassin goes on mission to save an innocent, putting them in conflict with their own employers” is about as old a trope as tropes get. Tjahjanto himself has done it now at least three times, with Headshot, The Night Comes For Us, and now Shadow Strays all playing around with the same basic form.
But within that simple framework, Tjahjanto keeps folding in different ingredients to produce wildly divergent results. Headshot plays like a lost Jackie Chan ‘hapless badass brawls his way through peril’ programmer that runs into the buzzsaw of exploitation cinema. Night Comes For Us takes its elementally simple narrative and then piles on Dead Alive levels of flesh mortification until you have to either laugh at the excess or puke. Or, I don’t know, turn the movie off, I guess.
And now we have The Shadow Strays, which uses our familiarity with the basics of this set-up as an excuse to linger in the margins that other films don’t feel the need to explore. We all know that Umbra and the other shadows will eventually return and there will be hell to pay, but in the meantime Tjahjanto can ruminate on things like the sick camaraderie that exists between his three main villains, a trio of grotesque psychopaths who you desperately want to see die AND three men who love each other like brothers and weep with sincere anguish and grief when one of them gets the cut. And why not follow Umbra on her side-quest and the moral dilemma she faces there that will complicate her reaction to the news that 13 needs to be taken out. And then there’s Jeki, (Kristo Immanuel) a random thug that 13 presses into service who proves to be wildly untrustworthy and also far more complicated than his function within the story would seem to necessitate.
It’d be easy to criticize the length of The Shadow Strays, but when I’m in the hands of a director this confident operating at this level of mastery, I want to sit back and let them cook, trusting that all those disparate pieces are going to fit together and be more than the sum of their parts, however long it takes to comes into focus.
And The Shadow Strays rewards that patience, the novelistic willingness to digress and luxuriate in the details and sprawl working to turn larger-than-life archetypes into flesh and blood people. By the time the film reaches its apocalyptically ruthless final minutes, it starts to feel almost profound. For all its international scope and overstuffed plotting, The Shadow Strays boils down to two women who should love each other, who DO love each other, beating one another to bloody pulp at the behest of powers they’ll never understand for motives they’ll never even know. The powerful give orders, and we have no choice but to comply, and so the world moves deeper into hell.
But The Shadow Strays holds on to the hope that there might be a way out. All of Timo’s apologetic assassin films, in fact, argue that there is a way out of hell. The path may be grueling, but if you have the courage to love and the temerity to persevere in that love despite all the horrors that this world will reap on you, you just might make it through to the other side.
Or, at the very least, earn the privilege of keeping the fight going for another day.
The Shadow Strays is now on Netflix.
-
GOODRICH Review: Father Doesn’t Know Squat
“You got this, mama!”
There are more than a couple of reasons to be excited about the new dramedy Goodrich. The fact that this is a story for grownups about real conflicts that wasn’t as low profile as others like it have been was reason enough to get some hopes up. Besides that, there was the reunion of Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell (and the hope that their chemistry from 1996’s Multiplicity would replicate), not to mention the interesting notion of seeing Keaton doing a reworking of his 1983 hit Mr. Mom. Finally, there was the excitement of seeing the pedigree of writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer (daughter of Nancy and Charles) flourish in her second time behind the camera following 2017’s Home Again. As it turns out, none of those reasons are worth getting excited about.
Andy Goodrich’s life is thrown into a tailspin when his wife Naomi (Laura Benanti) informs him that she has checked into rehab, leaving him in charge of their 9-year-old twins, Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Copera). As he tries to navigate life as an L.A. art gallery owner and play both parents to his children, Andy finds himself turning for help to Grace (Mila Kunis), his adult daughter from a previous marriage, who is currently expecting her first child and is somewhat reluctant to help her father.
Goodrich the film is almost as relentless and clueless as the character himself, often echoing the fact that he’s got to adapt to the new world quickly he’s found himself in. The film wastes no time plunging right into the story’s drama before the title even comes on the screen. This sets the tone for some inconsistent pacing with the filmmakers not knowing when to slow it down, speed it up, or simply end the scene. It doesn’t help that the film is overscored to death with a recurring musical theme that’s more at home in a posh restaurant than in a modestly budgeted dramedy. The music doesn’t do much to aid the many false moments of familial conflict that come out of nowhere and doesn’t add anything that furthers the main character or his journey. Yet even when everything behind the scenes threatens to give the audience whiplash when it comes to the emotion-hurdling narrative, there’s a definite appreciation of the fact that the filmmaker sidesteps some of the more obvious plot turns, especially when it comes to the overly long third act.
But the hurdles in Goodrich (both the character and the film) keep mounting. As the film progresses, other problems in Andy’s life keep him from focusing on the central matter at hand, namely trying to become the kind of father he never realized he could be. It’s a shame that the movie isn’t all in on this side of the story, especially since the script gives the character moments where we do see him slowly start to become the kind of parent he should have been all along. Instead, Goodrich throws a slew of subplots at the audience, each more unnecessary than the last, and all feeling like they only exist to showcase an overqualified actor in an underwritten role. There’s Michael Urie as the divorced gay dad of one of Billie and Mose’s classmates who feels like he’s only there to have an awkward moment with Andy. Elsewhere, there’s another storyline involving Carmen Ejogo as a songstress/poet whose artist mother has just died, prompting Andy to chase after her for the rights to her work so that he can showcase it in his gallery. Oh, right, the art gallery Andy runs with Kevin Pollack is also on the brink of closing due to financial difficulties.
Meyers-Shyer said that she wrote Goodrich with Keaton in mind and wouldn’t have made it had he said no. This was a wise move as the actor is so well-suited for the role and gives a performance that feels both in his wheelhouse and still remarkably fresh. Keaton is such a naturally affable persona, he’s able to bring out that same quality in Andy, despite his many flaws. He pairs well with every member of the bloated cast, especially the radiant Kunis. However, despite being the female lead of Goodrich, the actress disappears for large chunks of the film. It’s almost as if she’s been forgotten and overlooked by the movie as well as Andy. Still, the work she manages is a reminder of what an accomplished actress she is. The rest of the performers do well enough, but no one stands out in a movie that was only ever Keaton’s in the first place.
Goodrich isn’t a complete misfire, I should point out. As a filmmaker, Meyers-Shyer isn’t afraid to maintain a hold on some of the story’s tougher moments, such as when Andy is forced to tell his kids the truth about where their mom is. There’s also something both funny and sad about the way Andy remains flabbergasted by the announcement that Naomi has entered rehab while no one around him seems surprised. Meanwhile, a scene showing Andy and his twins watching Casablanca with father and son arguing about the ending is a breath of fresh air and the kind of scene you wish this movie had more of. Goodrich, both movie and character, can’t help but let down the people who believed in them, despite trying hard to deliver on their promises. Still, they both did their best.
-
SMILE 2, Same as The First Time, Just Bigger, Bolder, and Gorier
Despite the ongoing, post-pandemic instability of the theatrical experience, the horror genre remains a low-cost/high-reward investment for movie studios and independent producers eager, even desperate for commercial success. Hit on a modestly budgeted or even micro-budgeted horror entry and not only do the original investors eat well, a premise- or character-rich film offers the possibility of sequels, spin-offs, and eventually, prequels, remakes, and reboots once audiences have grown tired of or disinterested in a particular series. In short, a horror-based hit can lead to not just a series, but a lucrative, long-running franchise as well.
Easier said than done, of course, but when writer-director Parker Finn’s feature-length debut, Smile, premiered in the fall of 2022, genre-loving audiences responded enthusiastically. With an unmistakably healthy 12:1 ROI (return on investment), a sequel was greenlit almost immediately. Centered less on a specific character or group of characters and primarily on its human-haunting, trauma-feeding demon, Smile was – and remains – suited for the franchise treatment. Success or failure depended on whether the aptly named sequel, Smile 2 (no subtitle), would deliver on the combination of jump scares, existential dread, and bleak fatalism of the original, but add a few twists and turns of its own to guarantee a minimal sense of freshness, novelty, or originality.
Smile 2 does and doesn’t, treating its predecessor as a template or formula, including major emotional and plot beats, but spins them in a new direction by swapping out a hospital psychiatrist, Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), who faced – and lost – to her demons, imaginary and real, with a pop megastar, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), recovering from a history of substance and alcohol and a devastating car accident a year earlier that left her physically, emotionally, and mentally scarred and her actor boyfriend, Paul Hudson (Ray “son of Jack” Nicholson), dead at the bottom of a ravine.
Skye may be far from ready for the comeback tour pushed on her by her controlling, manipulative mother (and manager), Elizabeth Riley (Rosemarie DeWitt), or the senior record company executive, Darius (Raúl Castillo), funding her comeback, but from her perspective, she doesn’t have a viable choice. And that’s all before Skye, desperately in need of something stronger than over-the-counter pain meds, meets up with high school acquaintance turned drug dealer, Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage). Already haunted by the rictus grin-loving demon, Lewis dispatches himself in the goriest, gnarliest way possible as an already traumatized Skye watches in disbelief.
Skye, however, doesn’t immediately realize that she, like Lewis before her and countless others before Lewis, has been infected with the trauma-feeding demon. In less than a week, Skye will become the demon’s latest victim, fated like the others, to infect whoever witnesses her demise. As her already fragile mental state continues to deteriorate, everyone around her, invested less in Skye as a person than Skye as a brand, ignores the increasingly obvious warning signs. After all, even if it costs Skye her mental health or even her life, the show must go on, investors repaid, and profits made, placing Skye between two not-quite metaphorical forces, late-stage capitalism and a soul-destroying demon. Finn leaves it up to the audience to decide which one is worse, though to Skye and where Smile 2, already looking toward the next entry, ends up, it ultimately doesn’t matter.
With a substantially bigger budget, Finn goes all out, delivering a slick, visually engrossing film that could have easily stood on its own without the trauma-feeding demon (except, of course, metaphorically). Leaning heavily on Scott’s talents as a singer, dancer, and performer, Finn turns a potential liability (i.e., getting audience buy-in to Skye’s mega-success) into an asset. From the original songs performed by Scott-as-Skye to Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s (The White Lotus, Black Mirror, Utopia) dissonant, cacophonous score, ambient sound design that disconcertingly integrates itself into de Veer’s expansive score, and Lester Cohen’s (American Rust, Things Heard & Seen, The Looming Tower) ace-level production design (e.g., Skye’s cavernous Manhattan apartment and the recreation of Skye’s onstage performances), and it’s difficult, if not impossible, not to conclude the series has leveled up significantly.
Narratively, however, Smile 2 suffers from a problem typical of sequels, a sameness and predictability that comes with repetition. As with its predecessor, Finn favors playing the subjective/objective game story-wise, leaving the audience repeatedly guessing whether what they’re seeing and hearing onscreen is “real” within the world of the film, or a series of mental projections caused by Skye’s troubled, haunted mind. It’s unquestionably an enjoyable narrative game, but only up to a certain point. From there, diminishing returns begin to take over.
While that’s of little importance or effect here, it signals a potential problem for Finn and where he takes the next entry in the series: Once audiences have become intimately familiar with the narrative games you play if you consciously choose not to change them up, those diminishing returns start slipping into negative territory. Probably aware of the issue, Finn sends off Smile 2 on a deliberately perplexing, frustratingly open-ended note, one that hopefully he’s already figured out how to satisfactorily resolve when, as expected, studio executives green-light Smile 3 after the first weekend’s box-office returns have come in.
Smile 2 opens theatrically on Friday, October 18th, via Paramount Pictures.
-
PARAMOUNT SCARES Vol. 2 Delivers Another Eclectic Collection of Thrills and Chills
A collectable set with 4K Editions of Friday the Thirteenth Part II, Orphan: First Kill, World War Z, and Breakdown
Following up on their debut in the series, PARAMOUNT SCARES VOL. 2 is another off-beat assembly of some of Paramount’s more notable spooky features, brought together on 4K-UHD, in a collectable set, with a bunch of extra treats thrown in. This time, its a return to Camp Crystal Lake in Friday the Thirteenth Part II, a diminutive deception in Orphan: First Kill, a rampant zombie swarm in World War Z, and the Kurt Russell action thriller Breakdown.
The Package
First, a look at the overall package housing these four films, and an assortment of other goodies. The box is adorned with green-hued imagery from the films included. A removable label on the back details the technical specs of the films, and other contents.
The goodies within include a Paramount Scares pin, domed sticker, and an iron-on patch for each of the 4 films. There’s also a collectable (folded) poster.
Also inside is a special edition of Fangoria magazine, with contributor articles covering all 4 films included in the release.
Beneath all the swag are the films themselves. Each is the standard release, with an additional slipcase which unifies them into a common design theme, using artwork and a choice quote from the film.
The Films
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II
Five years on from the original, we get a return to Camp Crystal Lake, and the real emergence of Jason Voorhees as a supernatural force. Similar in setup and execution to the first, but with a step up in kills, more characters to root for (and against), and a real buildup of the mythology that would come to surround this hulking figure. He’s wearing a burlap sack rather than his yet to be acquired hockey mask, but this is a barnstorming entrance and sets a template for the films that followed.
Having seen the film in 35mm many times, it’s a grainy film, and the 4K here feels like a faithful representation of that experience. Grain is preserved, perhaps a touch cleaned up, while other elements are cleaned up. Its a great quality transfer, with an eye opening level of detail. Colors are deep, authentic, and warmly rendered. The 4K shows up the budget and age of the film for sure, but in a way that only adds to its mood and charm.
Extra Features:
• Inside Crystal Lake Memories: A short featurette covering a book that details the making of the franchise
• Friday’s Legacy: Horror Conventions: Footage of Scarefest 2008 which hosted a reunion of many of the cast and crew members
• Jason Forever: Q&A with key figures in the creation of the film’s destructive force, Ari Lehman, Warrington Gillette, C.J. Graham and Kane Hodder
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood Short: Part 2
BREAKDOWN
Less in your face than some of the other films in the collection, but damn effective at delivering a dose of suspense and thrills. A tale simple in setup, as married couple Jeff (Kurt Russell) and Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) break down on a cross-country journey. Stranded on a remote highway, a trucker (J.T.> Walsh) stops, and offers to help by taking Amy and drop her at the nearby diner to call a mechanic. Hours go by, and Jeff eventually discovers his wife never made it. The local crowd don’t take him seriously, and neither do the police, and when he finally crosses tracks with the trucker, he denies ever seeing Jeff or his wife before. It’s one of those nightmarish scenarios, triggering in it’s situation and simplicity, and as a film, damn effective thanks to the committed performances of Russell and Quinlan, and the propulsive direction of Jonathan Mostow, who makes this remote, rural, and road based tale one of the highlights of the wave of thrillers that came out or the 90s.
The 4K is again impressive, with a really robust image, solid color representation, and high level of detail. The film unfolds in sun-bleached surrounds and as such draws on murkier, earthy palettes, as well as blues for that sky overhead. Both look superb, and the quality of image is consistent from start to finish.
Extra Features:
• Commentary by director Jonathan Mostow and Kurt Russell—NEW!: A well informed and lively commentary that sees the pair reflect on the film and the shoot. Packed with personal anecdotes, discussions of some alternate takes and ideas (some included below), the story origins, practical effects, and more
• Filmmaker Focus: Director Jonathan Mostow on Breakdown—NEW!
• Victory Is Hers – Kathleen Quinlan on Breakdown—NEW!
• A Brilliant Partnership – Martha De Laurentiis on Breakdown—NEW!
• Alternate Opening—NEW!
• Alternate Opening with commentary by director Jonathan Mostow—NEW!
• Isolated Score—NEW!
• Theatrical Trailers
WORLD WAR Z
Ok, it’s a far cry from the original novel from Max Brooks, but there are elements of World War Z that are extremely effective at setting itself apart from over zombie outbreak movies. One the surface, an action horror centered around a pandemic that is rapidly turning humans into primal creatures. A bite takes seconds to turn a person into a fast moving vessels contagion and death. We take in the global scale of this by following United Nations investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), as he tries to shield his family from the outbreak, find a cure/cause, and prevent the wiping out of society. It’s this last aspect that marks WWZ a little different, with a global mission showing us how mankind responds to try and save itself. Approaches differ from country to country, culture to culture, yet each falls to this encroaching disaster. It parallels ecological warnings about out ill preparedness in the face of natural disaster, be it a hurricane or a flood of zombies, and how ultimately, science might offer our only solution.
This package includes a 4K remastered UHD for the theatrical. There is an inclusion of the films unrated cut, but it’s only here on Blu-ray. The 4K presents with a greenish tint, along with some deep inky blacks. Detail impressed, even in the more chaotic CGI heavy sequences.
Extra Features
• Origins: A making of doc, pulling together contributions from various cast and crew members, and touching on the process of how the book was adapted for the big screen
• Looking to Science: A doc on how the history of zombie films was drawn from, and meshed with scientific knowledge to craft a more grounded feature
• WWZ Production: a more expansive look at the production, key action sequences, stunts, casting, and more
ORPHAN: FIRST KILL
Orphan is the tale of Esther, a girl adopted from Estonia who turns out to actually be a psychopathic, murderous woman who suffers from a hormonal disorder leaving her trapped in the form of a child. How do you top that? Well, First Kill somehow manages it. Setting itself up as a prequel, it charts the first family to take care of Esther, who is again played by the same actress, Isabelle Fuhrman, even though it’s 13 years later. A combination of good skin care, makeup, and camera trickery allows them to pull this off, at least in a way that works with the tone of the film. With the ‘reveal’ already being known, we need a new twist to shake things up and boy do we get it, courtesy of a brilliant turn (and twist) from this families matriarch, played by Julia Stiles. It’s darkly hilarious, committed to it’s own farcical setup, and brilliantly entertaining fare.
The film was shot digitally at 4.5K, and the transfer here reflect the clarity of image you’d expect. After a well rendered opening set in Slovenia, the film takes on more grey and blue overtones. The production itself is rather muted in terms of colors, production design. its not a showcase for the 4K format, but its more to do with the drabness of the film than the 4K transfer. When considering the nature of the film, serving as a prequel to the original after 13years, it cries out for some behind the scenes glimpses, sadly we’re out of luck, as no extra features are included.
The Bottom Line
It’s an eclectic assembly to be sure, but each film in vol. 2 of Paramount Scares scratches a different kind of horror itch, be it the action of World War Z, the thriller vibes of Breakdown, the pure slashery of Friday the 13th Part II, or the off-kilter twists of Orphan: First Kill. The 4K presentations impress, and the assortment of goodies rounds out a fun filled package for Halloween season.
Paramount Scares Vol. 2 is available via Paramount Home Entertainment now
-
LAND OF THE DEAD 4K UHD, Romero Tackles the Haves and the Have Nots
This week saw the release of Scream Factory’s 4K UHD release of Land of the Dead, the film that had George Romero capitalizing on the first wave of the zombie renaissance in the early aughts to fund his biggest budgeted and most ambitious entry in his “of the Dead” series at 19 million. The film had the director who often used the zombie sub-genre to tackle social issues this time tackling the haves and the have nots with a metaphor that is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. I had followed the project as it languished in development hell for nearly two decades, as the director struggled to get projects funded, one of them being a live action Resident Evil adaptation. Oddly enough we have Zack Snyder and James Gunn to thank for this film, it was thanks to the success of Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, written by Gunn, that helped bring the walking dead back into vogue and got Hollywood on the phone now calling Romero.
I grew up watching Romero’s dead trilogy on VHS and was ecstatic that Romero would be not only making a new entry, but Land, but it would be a continuation of the series I grew up on, which was previously titled Dead Reckoning in pre production. First Fox courted the director, only to lose him to Universal who met the director on his terms, allowing him to not only go hard with the gore, but not lose any of his edge. I still remember how surreal it felt watching not only a new George Romero zombie film at the time, but at my local AMC opening night no less. This after wondering for most of my life, if George would ever get to make the rumored script yet and if I would even get to see it on the big screen, given how much horror was direct to DVD at the time. Blockbuster shelves were at the time, where direct to video horror premiered and profited the most.
For those that have never seen Land, it takes place in 2005 in George Romero’s zombie waste land. Transpiring in the director’s home of Pittsburgh, PA where a post apocalyptic society has cleaned up the city of zombies, creating a small respite in the city surrounded on two sides by water .The wealthy live in a highrise called Fiddler’s Green that mimics life pre-apocalypse for those than can afford it, if you can’t life is much different. We follow a group of scavengers who are charged to go into the wasteland in a giant armored RV called ”Dead Reckoning” and bring back supplies to the city. Things go sideways when one of Reckoning’s crew who’s been doing the dirty work for the city’s dictator/leader played by Dennis Hopper is turned away from taking residence in Green and in turn hijacks the armor plated mobile fortress for revenge.
Now where Romero works is counterculture magic, in the opening we have a group of zombies who appear to be smarter, mimicking their former lives in the small town where Reckoning’s crew gather supplies. This is also a bizarre divisive thematic thread that begins to run through the rest of the series. When a few zombies are killed when the scavengers leave town, these smarter shambling dead decide to follow the truck, slowly making their way to Fiddler’s Green. This echoes a statement by a character saying if we rally together we can really do something, and surprisingly enough here it’s not the people who descend on the ivory tower, but it’s the ultimate have nots, the zombies who were thought to be too stupid and have been reduced to an almost non threat to his society’s inner walls. But they rally together and march on the skyscraper to overthrow it, literally eating the rich.
Given current events Land hasn’t lost any of its bite with Hopper, who was primarily staring into direct to video fare here as a thug in a business suit at the top of his golden tower, keeping those beneath him in their place with an iron fist. (Sounds oddly familiar?) It’s cool to see both of the counterculture heavies in the same film both in front and in back of the camera, which gives us one of the best lines of the trailer when Hopper delivers his best 60s stoner inspired delivery for “Zombies, man. They creep me out.” The fact that it’s the zombies that ultimately rise up to overthrow his reign, is both hilarious, and basically how it would probably play out. Everyone under him is more concerned about their own well being and status to do anything. It’s the undead, who literally have nothing left to lose, who decide to take what they can back.
The rest of the cast is great here from John Leguizamo, who is just chewing the scenery around him as the heavy Cholo, Kaufman’s problem solver and member of teh Recknoning crew, an up and coming in the US Asia Argento and the lead here Riley (Simon Baker) who’s damn good here a the reluctant hero, but he didn’t do much else afterwards. I remember one of the really big deals here, was both Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright show up as zombies in the film thanks to their love letter to Romero that started their Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, Shaun of the Dead, which came out only a year earlier. All this sort of coalesces into what was Romero’s last great zombie epic. He would churn out a few more films over the years all in the same universe, but they all failed to reach these heights ambitiously and metaphorically.
The special features on the UHD/Blu-ray contain:
Bonus Features for UHD/Blu-ray
DISC ONE (4K UHD, UNRATED VERSION):
- NEW 2024 4K Restoration From The Original Camera Negative
- Presented In Dolby Vision And Dolby Atmos
- Audio: English DTS-HD 5.1 Surround & 2.0 Stereo
- Audio Commentary With Writer/Director George A. Romero, Producer Peter Grunwald, And Editor Michael Doherty
- Audio Commentary With Zombie Performers Matt Blazi, Glena Chao, Michael Felsher, And Rob Mayr
DISC TWO (BLU-RAY, UNRATED VERSION):
- NEW 2024 4K Restoration From The Original Camera Negative
- Audio: English DTS-HD 5.1 Surround & 2.0 Stereo
- Audio Commentary With Writer/Director George A. Romero, Producer Peter Grunwald, And Editor Michael Doherty
- Audio Commentary With Zombie Performers Matt Blazi, Glena Chao, Michael Felsher, And Rob Mayr
- Undead Again: The Making Of Land Of The Dead
- Bringing The Dead To Life
- Scenes Of Carnage
- Zombie Effects: From Green Screen To Finished Scene
- Scream Test – CGI Test
- Bringing The Storyboards To Life
- A Day With The Living Dead Hosted By John Leguizamo
- When Shaun Met George – Simon Pegg And Edgar Wright Visit The Set
DISC THREE (BLU-RAY, THEATRICAL VERSION):
- NEW 2024 4K Restoration From The Original Camera Negative
- Audio: English DTS-HD 5.1 Surround & 2.0 Stereo
- Cholo’s Reckoning – An Interview With Actor John Leguizamo
- Charlie’s Story – An Interview With Actor Robert Joy
- The Pillsbury Factor – An Interview With Actor Pedro Miguel Arce
- Four Of The Apocalypse – An Interview With Actors Eugene Clark, Jennifer Baxter, Boyd Banks, And Jasmin Geljo
- Dream Of The Dead: The Director’s Cut With Optional Commentary By Director Roy Frumkes
- Deleted Footage From Dream Of The Dead
- Deleted Scenes
- Photo Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
While the extras here are all pulled from previous editions, and from a time where bonus features were one of key selling points of physical media, fans like myself who’ve picked this up a few times before only care about the new transfer. Is this now the definitive edition of this film? I can tell you indeed it is. While the film’s color palette is definitely a reflection of its time with lots of those blues and ambers, it definitely has that filmic look. Given the budget and the source the grain is present, but isn’t out of control.The transfer does retain that organic film look and texture and is definitely an upgrade from my DVD.
So now we just need a 4K of Day and we’re good. This is yet another comprehensive and definitive edition from Scream Factory that’s got both a great presentation-wise paired with all the bonus content as well. While this is something we took for granted initially, we’re finding out not everyone goes that extra mile with their bonus content. Watching Land for the review, it was also really great to see how the film still feels as relevant as ever with its take on poverty, power and revolution; sadly some things just never change. While the rest of the Zombie series didn’t quite reach the heights both metaphorically and financially as Dead, it was still great to see Romero get the big blockbuster treatment he deserved, at least this once.
-
SMILE 2: When you Brat So Hard, Your Mind is Literally Possessed by a Demon
Like The Substance, Smile 2 is as much a horror film as it is an artifact of our chronically online pop obsessed zeitgeist. The film is just as fascinated with how demon brain parasites mutate a mind inducing paranoia, as it is showing us how pop stardom and toxic fan meet and greets do the same exact thing. This dynamic allows the film to offer up a less than sympathetic protagonist in a recovering 365 party girl, on her post rehab, pre-tour press run. Her party ended in a drug fueled car crash that killed her actor boyfriend, scarred her body and put her in celebrity time out. While some folks may love a comeback, if TikTok has taught me anything, everyone loves a public celebrity crash out even more. That is what Smile 2 offers up in heaping amounts along with Terrifier level gore in moderate doses.
We meet up with our pop starlet Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) a year sober, and a few weeks before her big comeback tour, she’s rehearsing her choreography onstage when she gets a ping in the back from the accident. She needs vicodin, but thanks to her previous substance abuse issues, she has to hit up an old high school drug dealer – who just so happens to be infected with the entity from the first film. From there it goes about how’d you expect, one public meltdown after another, destroying her fragile media persona, while everyone around her thinks she’s just your typical over dramatic celebrity relapsing, when in fact she is battling a demonic brain parasite. Also given how we discern she treated those around her before rebab, we get that she was a rather insufferable startlett before this thing, who probably wasn’t much different before she had the brain parasite.
The first Smile was fine, but it was very derivative and more concerned with jump scares than really trying to say anything. Here however, there’s a few things going on under the hood as her reality begins to crumble around her, reducing her to nothing before our eyes. The fickleness of fame, the dangers of addiction, how our society’s outlandish beauty standards impact women and the perils of celebrity, are all things the film touches on as we fall down this surreal rabbit hole. The further down we get, the more the camp begins to amp up (background dancer attack sequence, hello?) as the ending has our protagonist going full on crash out, stealing cars and playing GTA6 IRL. Think bald Britney mixed with Martin Lawrence in 1999. While we do get some actual lore this time around given the runtime, it still leaves a bit to be desired as to where this entity came from.
Smile 2 was an unexpected surprise. Writer/Director Parker Finn really tried to do something unique with the material and it paid off. Not all protagonists have to be sympathetic and sometimes it’s really fun to watch terrible things happen to horrible people, something highlighted by the opening shootout in a trap house. This film also has some intriguing things to say about celebrity as well as how that kind of power can do terrible things to people, which is why we’re let off the trauma hook this time around and can enjoy watching Skye go through the ringer. If Smile has taught me one thing, it’s that not all horror franchises have to be a serialized story and sometimes that’s a better thing. It also really makes the franchise about the overarching thematic question of what is this thing after? What is it trying to accomplish?
All I do know is after this it just gets a whole lot more interesting.
-
Two Cents Continues Its Celebration of Found Footage Horror with INCANTATION
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
As Julian noted last week, his Cinapse journey began in 2014 with a piece on Noroi: the Curse. A decade later, his debut audio commentary is included on Noroi’s first Western release as part of the J-Horror Rising box set from Arrow Films. To celebrate, Ed invited him to curate this month’s Two Cents, focusing on personal recommendations for found footage horror.
The Pick: Incantation (2022)
As a diehard found footage nerd myself, I am disappointed in myself to say that this film is one that I somehow missed completely. While Noroi has been on my list for years – and, through my own folly, I have not yet watched the film that launched Julian’s heralded Cinapse run and love of found footage – Incantation wasn’t even on my radar. So rather than pretend I know what I’m talking about, here is Julian on why he programmed this Taiwanese gem:
I first came across Incantation during its original Netflix cycle in 2022, back when films like the Korean Marui Video and the Thai-Korean co-production The Medium made the rounds. Like these films, Incantation was positioned by fans and critics to be a “successor” to the unique found footage terror created by Koji Shiraishi’s body of work–and for my money, it’s the film that comes closest to matching Noroi’s evocative sense of meta-dread. With Incantation, Kevin Ko quickly draws viewer into an intriguing web of forbidden Buddhist lore and emotionally-charged maternal bonds before a staggering series of twists, creating a found footage film that directly implicates its viewers in the viral spread of its horror. It’s a rug-pull made even more devious thanks to Incantation’s streamer debut, and one that I’m more than eager to share as part of our October lineup.
Featured Guest
There is no singular successful formula for found footage horror. It’s a subgenre that ebbs and flows like the subgenres that came before it. And even more so, it’s a subgenre that can be done on such a low budget that we often find it hard to determine the quality of these films based on visuals alone.
What we DO know is that when found footage works, it WORKS, and 2022’s Incantation works. Religious folk horror told from an amateur, skeptical yet mostly respectable, team of sleuths, one of which has deep ties to the religion in which they’re investigating. But what REALLY sells the film is the audience participation, something which we rarely see let alone in found footage films. It challenges us to pay attention, looking for clues throughout the film. In turn, our investment is rewarded with effective storytelling and exciting scares.
The Team
In found footage films, it’s not enough to simply justify why a camera exists to the audience; creators must also justify why characters need to use it, and create compelling characters who are equally driven to document their horrific experiences. Kevin Ko’s Incantation masterfully intertwines these genre demands, and its implication of the viewer becomes a crucial part of its horror, following in the footsteps of Ghostwatch and Ring.
Incantation follows Li Ronan (Hsuan-Yen Tsai), who takes in a foster daughter, Dodo (Sin-Ting Huan). We later learn Dodo is actually Ronan’s biological daughter, given up six years earlier after a harrowing ordeal in a remote village left Ronan in psychiatric care. Even before these revelations, Ko and Tsai ground Incantation’s horrors in Ronan’s fraught emotional journey as a mother–navigating the awkwardness of reconnecting with her daughter, how she internalizes Dodo’s perceived flaws or outbursts as a reflection of her parental abilities, and the helplessness she feels as Dodo falls victim to the central curse.
Ko’s cleverness, though, lies in using Ronan’s desperation to lure the audience deeper into Incantation’s spell. The emotional charge set by Ronan’s plea for us to watch the film in order to “save” Dodo never lets up–we search through each scene for ways we can help, despite our position as detached spectators. Ko heightens this emotional investment in how so much of the film’s scares are rooted in keeping us painfully aware of our viewership–from Dodo leaping off a building (before climbing back up), to a terrifying final scene while Ronan films blindfolded. Despite learning that the key to Mother Buddha’s lethal curse lies in how much one knows about her, Ronan’s unquestioning love for Dodo tricks us into never doubting our reciprocal trust in her. When she asks us to chant, we answer–to our doom.
Incantation is a wonderful, seamless blend of found footage, folk horror, and body horror, but Ko’s greatest feat is turning the film itself into a cursed object. In falling for Ronan’s story, we fall just as deeply into the curse and become complicit in its horror. With our investment weaponized, the experience lingers in such a visceral way–long after watching, we, like Ronan, feel compelled to spread the word.
While found footage and other POV styles of horror film are smack dab in the middle of my wheelhouse, foreign films tend not to be. Despite being a lover of the written word, having to watch subtitles with my film viewing is difficult for me, as the combination of my self-diagnosed adult ADHD and my busy life often means I watch films while also finishing my reports for work, coding for various websites, or crossing various other things from my always growing “to-do” lists. So, while catching up to films like Incantation (and Noroi) is difficult, it is often also a great experience, as it forces me to put down the computer, drop the mouse, or put down the pen.
I’ll be honest in admitting that this one took me a bit to latch onto, as I needed to calm my mind – and, with a lot going on recently, that proved difficult. However, once the movie got it’s teeth into me, it had me. While the found footage conceit in this one sometimes works brilliantly, it also doesn’t always feel like it fully works for me personally. What does work, however, is the visuals, the story details, and the extremely believable performances.
To be fair to this one, I’d like to rewatch and meditate on it… but that alone says that it’s a worthwhile film, doesn’t it? If this didn’t hit me, I wouldn’t even want to bother with another watch. So, for this fascination that it ignited within me and the ideas that are whirling around in my head about this story in relationship to Taiwanese culture, spirituality, and the folk stories of that region – I must thank Julian for programming this one.
OCTOBER: Found Footage Horror Curated by Julian Singleton
October 21 – Horror in the High Desert (Tubi – 1 hour 22 minutes)
October 28 – Noroi: the Curse (Shudder – 1 hour 55 minutes)
-
SMILE 2 Delves Deep Into the Horrors of Depression
Surprisingly funny and glitzy, Smile 2 continues the franchise’s exploration of how trauma haunts us
Naomi Scott stars in Paramount Pictures Presents “SMILE 2”
Image provided by Paramount PicturesTrigger Warning: This review and the film it discusses deal with the idea of suicidal ideation.
It has been an incredible year for horror, to put it mildly. It has been especially exciting to see new voices rising to create a vision of the future of the genre. So it is easy to say that the stakes that the second entry in the Smile franchise, from writer-director Parker Finn, feel particularly high. Just two years ago, it was the up and coming horror brand that caught people off guard, in no small part to a well-played viral campaign and a straight down the middle premise. Now it has to establish its place in the horror landscape against stiff competition.
Thankfully, on almost every level Smile 2 surpasses its predecessor. This is partially due to Finn maturing as a stylist and filmmaker, meaning that his use of playful spatial awareness and framing creates a stylish upgrade to the slightly grimier predecessor. His script also injects some much needed humor, helping alleviate some of the more nihilistic elements of the original. But most importantly, Smile 2 adds surprising depth to the already potent metaphor of the franchise. What was original parable about the ways that trauma follows and haunts us transforms into a broader exploration of depression, isolation and the terrifying influence of suicidal ideation.The film picks up one week after the first Smile but wisely, after a thrilling opening scene that bridges the two, more or less is a stand alone story. This time the terror centers around Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a pop star who is launching a new tour after being out of the spotlight for over a year following a fatal car crash that killed her boyfriend and left her severely injured. After publicly admitting to struggles with addiction, she is attempting to rehabilitate her career.
This gets derailed however after she witnesses the grisly suicide of her friend/drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage). Shaken by this event, her grip on reality soon starts to unravel, as she sees mysterious disturbing images, typically including people with unsettling, unwavering smiles. This all escalates in a way that will be familiar with anyone who saw the first film, but with plenty of surprising twists along the ride.
For anyone who has seen the first Smile, there will be a fair amount of clarity about what is going on from the beginning. For those that haven’t, however, the film luckily gives a reminder of the broader mythology that was revealed in the first film. In the name of avoiding revealing any major points here, suffice to say that much of what haunts Skye is less about a malevolent force that causes physical harm but much more psychological trauma and deep emotional pain. Put bluntly, the menace at the center of Smile 2 is suicidal ideation as a form of possession. Skye is hounded by a sense of inferiority and lack of worth, egging her on to end her life, as she struggles to assert her own sense of self-worth.The remarkable thing however is that while Smile 2 digs deep into these themes, it also consistently has a lighter touch than its moody but sometimes oppressively dire previous entry. It has explicit jokes and moments of levity that allow the darker elements to breathe and punch that much harder. I have been critical in the past of films that trivialize or even romanticize suicide, but that is not Smile 2’s prerogative by infusing more laughs into the proceedings. Rather it draws that dark contrast, that the mockable absurdity of the world is part of the curse of deep depression.
But make no mistake, at the center of the film is depression as a beast, an unknowable monster that lurks around every corner and is ready to pop up, despite when everything is going your way. Smile 2’s ability to present an unambiguously luxurious life for Skye underlines just how the monster lurks everywhere, in any circumstance, no matter how glamorous it may appear on the outside.
Perhaps the biggest surprise about Smile 2 is just how gorgeous it is. Finn clearly is experimenting and playing with more striking visuals to ground his horror, and playing with a wider sense of space than the previous film, making the earlier film feel drab and claustrophobic by comparison. With it’s glitz and unapologetic pop sensibilities, it asserts itself as more of a sensory delight, even as it delves into its darker content.
Similar to the first Smile, there are still some issues around pacing and an occasional over reliance on jump scares, especially as Skye’s descent into madness accelerates. However, the ending of the film, which incorporates a fair amount of twists to untangle, sticks the landing so well that it is easy to forgive a bit of sagging in the center. The implications of the final moments will excite fans of the first films, and suggests a franchise that is far from running out of ways to explore undeniably thorny subject matter.And that is something to smile about.
-
Gettin’ Down on SATURDAY NIGHT
“We just need to make it to air.”
Jason Reitman is the kind of filmmaker who is especially hard to pin down. The writer/director has taken on a chameleon-like approach to his work with no two films remotely alike on the surface. The sweet bite of Juno, the thoughtfulness of Labor Day, and the historical retelling of The Front Runner all feel like different films from different filmmakers. However, each one contains a quest for an understanding of the worlds they depict and a lack of judgment on the director’s part that has secretly become his trademark. The result is a collection of films featuring people caught at one impasse or another and Reitman’s determination to see them through to the end. The latest of these explorations takes us to New York in the 1970s where one of America’s most iconic landmarks is about to be born.
Set on the night of October 11, 1975, Saturday Night centers on Lorne Michales (Gabriel LaBelle), the producer and creator of a new variety show that seems to be coming apart at the seams hours before its TV debut. As he deals with an unpredictable cast, rigid censors, the network brass, and a missing studio audience, Lorne clings tight to his belief in the show as air time approaches.
Saturday Night is a pulsating film that’s full of delicious nostalgia, well-written dialogue, and a spirit that’s just as infectious and energetic as the people up on the screen. Although the movie takes the time to slow things down once in a while, the adrenaline of the piece comes from the manic, frenzy nature of live television, which is shown here to be a beast that’s unstoppable, but somehow tamable. The total lunacy that exists within the world of variety shows is on full display here, giving folks an insight into an art form that many have assumed was easy to pull off. Using a real-time storytelling device, Reitman recreates this world and brings us into it through near-perfect pacing, electrifying musical cues, and a contagious feeling flowing through everyone that anything, be it brilliance or catastrophe, is about to happen. Reitman’s Altman-esque touch with regard to the many different characters and subplots, including apprehensive actors, unpredictable writers, and a lack of faith from the network, places the audience right into the era and landscape of early SNL with such authenticity and total investment.
More than just a recreation of one of the most iconic shows ever to air, Saturday Night is a film about the creative spirit and the unwavering nature required to sustain it. The level of belief and faith in what a person is creating and how intensely unmovable they, as the creator, must be in order for it to survive is what is at the heart of the movie. Reitman shows how sturdy, steadfast, and, to a degree, ruthless, someone such as Lorne Michaels needed to be in order to protect what he created if it was ever to make it to air. Even when that vision wasn’t understood by many surrounding him (which Saturday Night makes a point to show was the case), the fierce protection he showed towards it was vital for its survival. Michaels’ reputation over the years has reflected this with various claims of toughness when it came to what’s made it to air on Saturday Night Live. What this film does (admirably, I might add) is to show why he’s had to assume that role from the beginning. Creatives have notoriously had an image of being flighty or flaky in the eyes of others, a perception that isn’t going away. What Saturday Night does is show how at their core, creatives are some of the most determined and strong-willed individuals you could ever hope to meet.
There’s a real thrill and an unexpected poignancy at seeing a cast of up-and-coming talent portraying a group of then-up-and-coming talent. Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Matt Wood as John Belushi, and especially Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase (the most uncanny of the bunch) are all delights as the not ready for prime time players. Meanwhile, Cooper Hoffman as producer Dick Ebersol, Willem Dafoe as David Tebet, and Rachel Sennot as Rosie Shuster add some depth and gravitas to the whole shebang. However, it’s LaBelle who gives the most commanding turn as Lorne, showing us both the passion and ferocity that have come to represent his real-life counterpart’s persona for decades.
Many of those choosing not to give Saturday Night a try are using the well-worn “I already know the ending” argument as their primary reason for not seeing the film. It’s a stance that most have considered tired and boring ever since Titanic thrust it into the mainstream back in 1997. While that movie should have put it to rest, Saturday Night shows it’s still alive, according to certain online pockets when mentioning this movie. Those who do watch Saturday Night will discover that it’s not about the ending, but rather the journey itself. What happens to these people at the end of the story is the capper, certainly, but ultimately means very little without the experience of the path they took getting there. It’s always about the journey; and Reitman, more than most, knows that.
Chevy Chase, Cooper Hoffman, Cory Michael Smith, Dan Aykroyd, Dick Ebersol, Gabriel LaBelle, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, In Theaters, Jane Curtin, Jason Reitman, John Belushi, Juno, Labor Day, Laraine Newman, Lorne Michaels, Movies, Rachel Sennot, Saturday Night, Saturday Night Live, SNL, The Front Runner, Titanic
