Jean-Marc Vallée enjoys playing heartstrings. He’s drawn to more irreverent forms of playing them but his end goals are clear, and what worked so well in Dallas Buyers Club and Wild—using broken and imperfect people to explore physical and emotional journeys—breaks down Demolition. The flawed protagonist in this case-study in grief is Davis Mitchell, whose emotional intelligence is so low it borders on sociopathic, proven by the (literally) destructive way he chooses to deal with the sudden death of his wife. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Mitchell as well as can be expected for such an irrational character, and Vallée’s introspective style pushes things as far as it can in building real feelings toward the story. It’s Bryan Sipe’s screenplay (his first major feature) that appears to be at fault, shoving as many emotionally explosive elements as possible into one script and only hinting at the sort of saving grace that would allow audiences to forgive the sentimental melodrama capping off the film.

Davis Mitchell is reminiscent of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman in more ways than just his emotional numbness. Clean-shaven, well-groomed, and career-driven, the house he and his young wife Julia (Heather Lind) share is all glass and metal—antiseptic like he is. During an argument while driving one day he and his wife are hit by a truck and Julia dies at the hospital while Davis escapes without a scratch. Shortly after receiving the news of her death, Davis attempts to buy some M&Ms from a vending machine and, when the package sticks in the machine, he takes down the vending machine company’s info.

With keen editing, Davis’ experience of the details of his wife’s death focuses more on everyone else’s emotions surrounding him, while he remains undisturbed. He escapes during the funeral reception to write a letter to the vending company, describing in awkward detail the circumstances surrounding his attempt to buy M&Ms. It feels distinctly unnatural, as nothing of Davis’ nature suggests he’d care much either way at having gotten the candy or not, but we’re meant to understand this is his way of emoting.

After returning to work as an investment banker soon after Julia’s death, Davis’ father-in-law Phil (Chris Cooper), who is also his boss, encourages him to take some time off and deconstruct his feelings. Davis decides to take him at his word, and though he doesn’t immediately take time off work, he does start taking apart almost anything that annoys him or causes him to wonder. This includes a bathroom stall, his refrigerator, an espresso machine, and his work computer. This behavior, of course, leads to some forced time off, and by this point the customer service representative of the vending machine company, Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), reaches out to Davis after becoming intrigued by his letters.

What follows is a hard to swallow friendship between the privileged Davis and Karen, a low-income single mother dating her boss and a marijuana—or cannabis, as she prefers to call it—user. While much of what happens on-screen is difficult to believe, such as Davis joining a construction crew to help destroy a house just for a reason to use a sledgehammer, his relationship with Karen and her son Chris (Judah Lewis) feels the most contrived. As if unable to pick a theme, the film slips into piling one high drama scenario onto the next, but through the filter of Davis’s inability to feel anything. If emotional appropriation is a thing, this movie embodies it.

How much more can a rich white man take from the world just to try and elicit some sense of grief for his perfectly awesome dead wife? As Davis bitches to the void through his letters to Karen (which continue, by the way, even after he knows she’s reading them, like some real-life Facebook status update), destroys millions of dollars of material possessions many people would be thrilled to own, and then forces his sorry self into the lives of poorer and more generous people than himself all while ignoring his own family’s attempts to show him love, it gets harder and harder to feel any empathy for Davis. It’s a case study in indulgent and privileged grieving.

Vallée is ever ambitious in exploring the nuances of the human condition and, as usual, he creates a film that looks and sounds beautiful. He’s an expert at incorporating music, even if Heart’s “Crazy On You” doesn’t fit here as smoothly as he might think. I find obvious fault with Gyllenhaal’s character but it’s not to do with his performance. If given the chance to express a more complicated range of emotion, it would have been easier to be endeared to Demolition. Watts is likable but her character is a washrag for Davis to wipe his face on. But the standout of the film is Judah Lewis, who is the only one capable of breaking hearts as a teenager trying to both find and be himself. Lewis’ character is the only one portraying emotions that make some sort of sense: teen angst, passion, and uncertainty. If only the film was about him.

Between April Fool’s Day, Passover, and Earth Day April tends to be a low-key sort of month (reeeal low-key if you celebrate 420), but the folks at Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products have created something new and silly for us ’80s nostalgic geeks to get excited about: ALIEN DAY. Based on the obscure reference of LV-426, the planet featured in the Alien films, April 26th has been proclaimed (by the people selling us things) as a day to celebrate the iconic franchise and, you know, go shopping.

First, Alien & Aliens will return to theaters on April 26th across the country. In over 20 cities, including Austin, New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, participating Alamo locations as well as partner venues will showcase a double-feature presentation of Alien and Aliens. The second film celebrates its 30-year anniversary this year. In addition to getting to relive the movies on the wide screen, there are all kinds of swag coming out, including a new Alien digital pinball table available via iTunes, Google Play, PlayStation Network, XBOX Live, and Steam. A new release of the Batman vs Alien comic from DC Entertainment and Dark Horse comics will be out, new trading cards and collectibles, and even new Funko dolls of the Queen alien and Ripley (note to self: buy immediately).

By far the silliest of the products coming out are Reebok Alien Stomper Sneakers, as worn by Ripley in the films (available April 26 via Reebok.com). I do not apologize in advance for laughing at anyone I see wearing these (while secretly wishing I had the cajones, sigh).

Check out the ALIEN DAY website for more info and to sign up for more information and ways to get involved, including a 24-hour trivia challenge via Twitter through @AlienAnthology.

And don’t forget, the next installment of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, Alien: Covenant starring Michael Fassbender, comes out in August of 2017. Stock up on those sneakers!

At a certain point during the WonderCon screening of AMC’s new show Preacher, based on the dark and brazen comic series of the late ’90s, I wondered fleetingly if what I was seeing was even allowed on television. Then I remembered AMC has basically rewritten the “rules” of television since Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Mad Men. The network that has pushed how ambitious and movie-like television can be, pushes that scope even wider with its most comic-like comic adaptation yet, and indeed perhaps done anywhere.

Whereas The Walking Dead is a gritty adaptation of a comic based in real-life scenarios and post-apocalyptic relationship dynamics, Preacher is your definitive supernatural and even horror-ish comic series. And not only does the show not tame down any of it, the show’s creators—Garth Ennis, creator of the original comic, with Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Sam Catlin producing and writing as well—have figured out how to create a screening experience that feels similar to the pacing, reveals, and character details one gets when flipping through the panels of a comic.

Dominic Cooper is Jesse Custer, a man with a dark past (of which a few black and white flashbacks only really hint at) who returns to his hometown of Annville, Texas to be the local preacher. Of course, he’s not actually any good at it, and there’s the small matter of him not being entirely sure there is a God. Joining him by way of passing airplane is Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun, who’s role in the British show Misfits immediately gives him my personal approval) an Irish vagabond with fighting skills and an unnatural ability to regenerate by drinking blood. But it’s by far Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga, also a Misfits alum!), Jesse’s ex-girlfriend, who makes the most impressive entrance: wrestling with a bad guy in a moving car through a corn field and then putting together a homemade bazooka with a couple of farm kids to take down more bad guys.

Fans of the comic will be glad that another familiar face from the series is introduced in the pilot. Though, to be honest, you don’t forget a face like his. Eugene, aka Arseface, is a teen in Annville who sports a particularly freakish mouth after a botched suicide attempt. His introduction is just one of many darkly comedic moments in the series.

And in fact, what makes Preacher most work is that dark comedy. It’s subtle in parts, like a news channel playing in the background of a scene announcing Tom Cruise has exploded (all part of the supernatural plot of Preacher), and blatant in other ways like a slow motion zoom in on Jesse’s face as he gets an obvious sense of pleasure kicking the shit out of a dude who deserves it.

In the WonderCon panel, producer and writer Sam Catlin mentioned that they were determined not to create “AMC’s Preacher” or “Preacher the TV Series” but just plain “Preacher,” which would suggest we’re sure to see even more of the incredibly dark elements that make up this series. But credit is most certainly due to AMC, whose freedom-giving to its showrunners has yielded some pioneering results. Those of us feeling the sting of The Walking Dead’s season coming to a close soon can find solace in knowing our thirst for blood—and some needed comedic relief after a dramatic season—will be quenched come May.

Preacher premieres May 22 on AMC. Follow Way Too Indie for further coverage.

If young adults were in the practice of playing dress-up as a way of acting out their interpretation of older adult behavior the way children do, it might look exactly like Backgammon, director Francisco Orvañanos’ warm looking and utterly lacking first film. Filled with all the moodiness of a high school theater production and with far less substance, this film about a group of college-ish aged upper-class white folks spending a weekend away at a mansion quickly unravels into a bizarre psychological charade. In its depiction of Lucian (Noah Silver), the charmed college student eager to accept his college buddy’s invitation to his parent’s east coast home, we’re meant to find the face of reason amidst bourgeois drama, but no one acts as irrationally as Lucian as his buddy’s sister Miranda (Brittany Allen) and her snobbish painter boyfriend Gerald (Alex Beh) alienate the remaining guests to the point of departure. Lucian’s decision to stay, beyond rational explanation, is only one of the many mismatched puzzle pieces that make up this confusing novella-inspired film (based on R.B. Russell’s Bloody Baudelaire).

As if in a contest for who can be the most irrational prick of the bunch, the small cast of Backgammon trade unwitty witticisms while having inexplicable access to a huge mansion of which Miranda and Gerald speak as though it’s their own. While downing an unending supply of wine and quoting Baudelaire, Gerald continuously puts down his girlfriend and supposed artistic muse saying such things as “Aren’t all the lovers of great men parasites?” Doing her best impression of a manic mysterious bundle of kittenish mannerisms, Miranda acts offended but broken. Gerald challenges Lucian to a game of cards, which he promptly loses, the winnings of which are all his paintings. Things escalate and Gerald ends up leaving over the dispute and Miranda’s sudden decision to give him the boot. Conveniently, Lucian’s college buddy Andrew (Christian Alexander) decides to head back to school with hardly a single scene under his belt, and to his (not enough) dismay, Lucian’s girlfriend Beth also leaves.

Lucian stays, lured in by Miranda’s particular brand of crazy, and the two of them are soon freaked out as Gerald’s paintings start to change and noises in the house lead them to believe Gerald may not have left after all. If only the supposed suspense inherent in such a scenario were at all utilized. Rather than draw out the suspense by having our characters behave accordingly, Lucian and Miranda have a series of backward conversations about nothing, drink a ton of alcohol and reveal their nonsensical insecurities. Most of this through long quiet scenes with non-conversations where one sentence is rarely followed up with another relating to it. Miranda is a flighty depressive toddler-like host to Lucian’s unbelievable infatuation. The film eventually realizes it should probably move toward some reveal and then beams like a five-year-old as it holds up its finger-painting-level shocker, which, if not predictable, is just plain yawn worthy.

Simon Coull’s cinematography is undeserved, all warm lighting and pore-revealing close-ups, and the camera’s fluid movements combined with the glacial storyline only make it more sleep-inducing. Orvañanos’ film debut needs about four more drafts and a lighter directorial touch. Unfortunately, bizarre does not always equal suspenseful, and as one of the foremost symbolists, one can assume Baudelaire would find the lack of meaningful expression in the film—other than moments where he himself is being quoted—to be quite mundane.

In the constant upswing that is the age of digital innovation, there’s hardly a technological advancement portrayed on film that doesn’t seem moments from reality. Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control feels so near to today’s level of digital immersion, one has to wonder if some tech company isn’t using him to sneak-peak their product. Creative Control’s five-minutes-from-now future depicts a black and white filmed Brooklyn and the creative professionals who occupy it. The film follows David (Benjamin Dickinson also plays lead), a marketing professional pitching a new client on how to release their product. The product is Augmenta, a pair of glasses—hipster in design—that bring the virtual world and the real world together allowing a person to be almost constantly plugged in. In this near-future phones look like iPhones but see-through, finger movements across a desktop work in lieu of keyboards, and with the glasses on one could technically be working on as many things at once as they want.

Creative Control’s focus is oddly far less on technology and more on the enhanced ways technology allows an already emotionally unintelligent and self-absorbed yuppie to spiral further into self-destructive tendencies. Unfortunately, the crystallized mechanics of this classic music dubbed, slow-motion filled revery reduce down to beautiful packaging on a boring operating system.

Dickinson gently pokes fun at the creative class of New York City with his film’s opening. David helps his boss who can’t figure out his phone as they wait for their new clients then delivers a cocky modern pitch to Augmenta’s creator Gabe (Jake Lodwick, the real-life creator of Vimeo) suggesting they use a technologically-hip and out of the box artist to use the glasses to create his art, giving the product some needed street-cred. The techno-artist in question is Reggie Watts (playing a stylized version of himself and by far the film’s strongest comedic relief) and his out there, existential, video-making is an edgy risk. David’s risk is a success, the client approves and he gets his own pair of Augmenta glasses, he texts his girlfriend about his victory. His girlfriend, Juliette (Nora Zehetner), is a yoga instructor and her personality would appear in stark contrast to David’s, all naturalistic and socially minded, spending her weekends at hippie communes teaching yoga. But as the film continues it’s clear they are both consumers of modern popular theologies, he gets lost in his technology, she looks for escape in something resembling mindfulness, both accomodated by contemporary entitlement.

David’s best friend is Wim (Dan Gill), a modern asshole photographer surrounded by models and unabashed in his infidelities. His girlfriend, Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), is another struggling artist, flirty and cute. David’s interest in her is obvious from the start, especially as he proceeds to find her a job at his company. She’s the first face his pair of Augmenta glasses see and David starts to use the glasses to create a virtual version of her. One night after a work event hosted by Reggie and fueled by psychedelic drugs, David walks Sophie home and ends up kissing her. They continue to flirt at the office. He and Juliette have a fight one evening, each taking jabs at the others values and judging their varied consumption of the mumbo-jumbo they’ve bought into. Juliette worries about the materials used to create Augmenta and the social conscience of the company. David criticizes her lack of a real job and constant need to focus on the world’s problems without offering solutions. He moves into a hotel and almost immediately tries to get Sophie to join him. She won’t, and his obsession with her grows and his virtual version of her gets more and more lifelike. Her digital avatar is a fine piece of special effects, distinctive from the rest of David’s world by being the only thing of color in the film.

From here relationship issues and career problems gather and gather crushing down on David’s growing obsessiveness and inability to focus on real life. Unfortunately, the more interesting angle would be to blame Augmenta and the virtual escape David uses it for, except that everything that ends up pushing David to his ho-hum conclusion is entirely to do with douche-y things he was likely to do anyway. From the film’s start, his inappropriate interest in Sophie is evident and there isn’t a single scene showcasing David being anything but a horrible boyfriend. It’s nice to know that even in this near-future the emotionally stunted and self-involved get their self-inflicted due. But the complete miss on an opportunity to delve into how virtual technology could create new possibilities, even new possibilities for douchebaggery, is just too transparent here. Like buying a huge chandelier and putting it in the guest bathroom.

Adam Newport-Berra’s cinematography is flawless, possibly even to the point of accenting the film’s story flaws. Depth of field can be made with a camera, depth of story cannot. The special effects blend seamlessly and are both subtle and enviable, this isn’t a future that is all that fear-inducing, it’s just close enough to the next step in technology some might find themselves wondering when we’ll get to try these things out for ourselves. Every other scene seems to include slow motion and classical music, a ploy that at first gives the movie an abstract sort of gravitas and then quickly becomes a worn out gimmick, though if it’s meant to accentuate David’s ridiculousness it’s not entirely unsuccessful.

It’s obvious that several of the film’s characters aren’t played by experienced actors such as Vice’s Gavin MacInnes as David’s boss, or Himanshu “Heems” Suri as David’s co-worker Reny, and even though Reggie Watts often plays some version of himself, even he could have gone bigger, though I will say they do bring a strange sort of natural element that feels weird enough to fit in. Dan Gill’s Wim is the most engaging to watch, owning his asshole-ish nature and being the most realistic in his use of the technology surrounding him. In one scene he sends David a video of himself having sex with Sophie, a natural sort of evolutionary upgrade on the classic dick pic that is both hilarious and ringing with truth. Nora Zehetner is well cast with her naively large eyes and sweet disposition, but Juliette is the most cartoonish of all the characters, given almost no realistic motivation for why she’d even be with a man like David or how it is she ends up on the path she takes in the film. It rather feels like another portrayal of a woman driven entirely by the men surrounding her.

In the end, Creative Control feels like a product of the introspective creative types it thinks its analyzing and breaking down. Unlike Spike Jonze’s Her, which also proffered a world where the technology feels imminent but with possible outcomes not yet explored, Creative Control neglects its primary plot device for its characters. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that it’s not doing anything original with those characters. High-strung creative narcissists are gonna be self-destructive unless stopped by something, and Dickinson gives us nothing but the inevitable. Which leaves us with a sharp-looking future projection of people we already know and hate.

Amidst a busy week of caucuses and Presidential debates, America receives another blunt force reminder that lest we ever lose sight of our god-given kick-assness there will always be an action film depicting our sheer superhuman patriotic determination to take down all terrorists who threaten us.

This reminder comes in the form of London Has Fallen, the fast-paced follow-up to 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen. Though, while the inclination of action films isn’t necessarily toward truthfulness—and moviegoers’ patriotism not to be taken for granted—London Has Fallen puts American exceptionalism on so high a pedestal it’s practically the stuff of fairy tales. Audiences looking for explosions and quippy wisecracks won’t be let down, but this film will not be winning us points with our allies anytime soon. As a depiction of not only how two Americans (one of them the President) can take on a major terrorist cell, but how much more competently they do it without the help of the government officials of the country they are located in, London Has Fallen is a cartoonish action flick cashing in on the attachments its characters built in the previous film and layering on American bravado at the expense of all other nations.

Directed by Babak Najafi, an Iranian-Swedish filmmaker without much to his name, the film starts at a large wedding party in Pakistan. We meet Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul), an arms dealer who advises his eldest son, who has recently offed one of their competitors, not to forget to take out their enemy’s family as well. Clearly this guy holds grudges. Next minute a drone attacks the wedding. Two years later, back in America, President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is two years into his second term and now very close with his Head Secret Service Agent, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler doing his best to stifle that Scottish accent), who saved his ass in the last film. Mike’s expecting a baby with wife Leah (Rhada Mitchell) and contemplating his retirement.

The unexpected death of the British Prime Minister urges the President to quickly fly off to London to attend the funeral. Banning and Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett reprising her role) don’t like the unknowns involved in last-minute travel, but Banning’s the best of the best, and he accompanies the President to the UK. Those who’ve seen the last film (or even the trailer) will easily guess where the story heads. Barkawi has picked his moment to exact revenge for the drone attack that killed his daughter. One by one he picks off the world’s leaders as they arrive in London, destroying much of the city’s historical landmarks in the process.

His minions appear from the crowds in such high numbers it would indicate almost no one seen thus far in London is actually a citizen. The police aren’t who they seem. Motorcyclists emerge to chase down the President as Mike rushes him back to the helicopter. They aren’t in the helicopters long when missiles down them. The death toll and destruction is close to comic-book movie status. As London goes on lockdown, Mike and President Asher make their way through the streets—Mike’s apparent built-in GPS guiding them—eventually connecting with an MI6 agent Jacquelin (Charlotte Riley) who suspects a mole (there’s always a mole). Banning and President Asher continue to defeat the odds for the rest of the film.

Butler and Eckhart do have a sort of chemistry, the kind I imagine frat boys everywhere have, and watching them run around together keeps up the energy of the film. Butler’s double chin might indicate his skill-levels in sleep deprived continuous fighting shouldn’t quite be what they are in the film, but his extreme kills hold a certain satisfaction that allows one to forgive his appearance.

The film’s real faults are unsurprising. In a world where terrorism is so very real, one might think Hollywood would veer away from the hyperbolic terrorism oft depicted in action films. Whereas fairy tales use unrealistic monsters to make everyday life seem safer, these sorts of action films are starting to feel almost insensitive to the realities of the world. Barkawi is possibly the most successful terrorist ever, his recruitment efforts being apparently so amazing there is never a corner Banning runs around where he isn’t met with a ceaseless mass of terrorist drones attacking him.

Like in the first film, at one point Mike yells out “RPG,” which for the uninitiated stands for “rocket propelled grenade,” though for this weapons-illiterate viewer I’d just have soon thought he was proclaiming his entrance into a “role playing game.” The camera follows like a first-person shooter for much of the action, bullets whizzing by, explosions happening casually.

The British government and intelligence are depicted as barely capable, not only being completely oblivious beforehand that an attack is being planned, but consistently being told by the American government officials back in the U.S. what the sitch is. And as much as EVERYONE likes to see Morgan Freeman in governmental positions (here he’s now the Vice President), the whole suits-in-the-situation-room film tactic for solving major global crises just doesn’t hold up anymore.

Many could find themselves enjoying London Has Fallen, but one has to wonder if they should. By taking out other world leaders, Barkawi insinuates they are the U.S.’s “family,” a fair depiction of U.S. allies, but the casualness with which they are killed and the disrespect paid to Britain plays into an oft-used tone for action films: America is the best. Just as Mike Banning asks his MI6 friend at one point in the film about civilian losses and she remarks they are unfortunately high, as though she’s remarking on a price increase on her favorite shampoo, so is it impossible to have any real feeling for the film or its outcome. There’s nothing less patriotic than desensitizing terrorism and in an age of globalization, London Has Fallen feels stale and outdated.

Jean-Marc Vallée is pretty intent on making sure audiences get their yearly dose of heavy-duty emotion. After pulling our hearts out in Dallas Buyers Club and making our eyes red with last year’s Wild, it appears he’s back to beat on our empathetic heartstrings once again. And, this time, he’s getting literal.

In the new trailer for Demolition, which opened last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Davis Mitchell, who writes letters of complaint against a vending machine company for that too-often occurrence of a machine failing to deliver on its candy promise. An especially infuriating experience because his wife had died hours earlier in a car accident. When a customer service representative, Karen (Naomi Watts), calls back out of concern for Mr. Mitchell, the two form a wayward friendship which introduces Mitchell to Karen’s son Chris (Judah Lewis).

Davis struggles to truly mourn his wife’s loss and begins a literal deconstruction of his life, with the help of Chris. Chris Cooper plays his father-in-law trying to get him to move on. We imagine tissues will be a must for this one.

Demolition releases theatrically April 8th, 2016.

There’s an interesting effect the so-called “sex comedy” has on our collective response to racy material. As far as sex goes in film, we seem to react in exact proportion to the way the film’s characters treat the subject. If sex is taboo to the characters, we’re exhilarated to see it happen, if sex is boring for them, we’re desensitized and numb. A virgin anticipating their first time places sex on a pedestal we can’t wait to see them reach, and a person who uses sex for comfort won’t surprise us with their promiscuity.

This is where How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town goes especially wrong (except maybe also in having such a long title). It assumes that the audience has its own opinion on the audacity of the sexual escapades happening and will find humor in being shocked, but then gives us characters who express no such sentiment and thus direct our reactions to be just as tame as what we’re seeing. It’s an interesting conundrum and seems to get at the heart of comedy itself.

Jeremy Lalonde may not be trying to shock us with his film (which he also wrote), but he’s at least trying to make us laugh. Opening on that all too familiar scenario, teenagers in love about to get it on for the first time, he sets a more dramatic tone to start when the intimate act gets broken up by other teens at the party who instantly shame young Cassie by forcing her to leave the party in her underwear. Feeling rejected by her teen-love, Adam, and trying and failing to get home undetected, insult is added to injury when Cassie’s mother (Lauren Holly), a famous writer of young adult stories, insults Cassie’s sexuality and indecency. In rebellion, Cassie runs through the small town of Beavers Ridge with no top on, solidifying her place in their history.

Fast forward 12 years—or should I say “Flash Forward” in honor of Jewel Staite who plays grown Cassie? Sorry, couldn’t resist the reference—and 30-year-old Cassie is a respected sex-columnist with a book deal. News that her mother has passed away forces her to return to Beavers Ridge. Adam (Ennis Esmer) has grown up to be an estate lawyer who married Heather (Lauren Lee Smith), the snobby girl who broke up their sexual tryst years before. It’s Adam who breaks it to her that her mother has in fact left her nothing, which leaves her in a tough spot as she was depending on an inheritance to pay back her book advance, writers block having left her bone dry.

Things get interesting when Adam’s wife Heather discovers Adam can’t get her pregnant. This being her only reason for existing means she’s forced to look for viable semen elsewhere. Cassie runs into the old gang at her mother’s funeral and a sort of throw down of prudes versus sexuals occurs. As a sort of gauntlet, Cassie asks if they’ve participated in an orgy, this apparently being the peak of sexual freedom. None of them have, and she leaves the victor. It’s only later that Cassie reveals to her best friend Alice (Katharine Isabelle) that she is, in fact, a virgin. The orgy idea, however, has provided Heather with the perfect way to get her hands on someone else’s swimmers, and with her husband’s blessing. She asks Cassie to lead an orgy, and seeing a potentially interesting story in the entire scenario, Cassie agrees.

It’s at this point that things could get interesting, except that the film establishes very early in the film that pretty much all the participants recruited for this orgy do, in fact, hate each other. Adam and Heather’s marriage is shaky, Alice and her slimy real estate husband Bruce (Mark O’Brien) are separated, Chester (Jonas Chernick) the local record store owner hardly seems the type to be friends with any of these people and is clearly in love with his employee Polly (Tommie-Amber Pirie), and Cassie opts to direct them rather than participate. Awkwardness ensues, but the film misses its mark in what would make a more interesting exploration.

Each of the participants involved in the orgy have some sort of sexual issue, a result one imagines from growing up in a sexually repressed town. Except that their histories aren’t explored in any way and the mental blocks each faces are meant to be more funny character quirks than full-blown plot points. The biggest fault of this is in Cassie’s development, which should clearly explore why a person who’s made sex their life’s work would abstain. The film abuses her abominably by implying that it’s a residual love for her high school crush that has kept her back. For 12 years? There is serious psychological issues here.

The film’s ending only extends its naivete, and doesn’t do much in the way of empowering its characters, especially Cassie. If Lalonde had allowed his characters to mimic real people, it could have found some real humor. But when sex becomes the gimmick, and the characters take on the same old tropes when dealing with it, there’s nothing to laugh at. Unlike more successful indie sex comedies like last year’s The Overnight where sexual psychology fueled the events of the film and provoked thoughtfulness as well as laughs, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town checks its psyche at the door and represses laughs as much as it represses true sexual experience.

In a week where the Golden Globes proved once again how much of a navel gazing joke and an obvious excuse for televised drunkenness it is, one has to look at this morning’s freshly announced Academy Award nominations and hope Academy voters will renew a little faith in the practice of picking out the best and brightest of the year in cinema.

The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road—both a bit more action-oriented than we’re used to seeing in Oscar forerunners—were the favorites with 12 and 10 nominations given to the two films respectively. And if suffering for your art earns you an Oscar these days, Leonardo DiCaprio might just finally take home a little gold dude. Fifth time’s the charm, Leo!

This year we have eight films vying for Best Picture and not a single person of color nominated in a lead or supporting role, which likely has more to do with the lack of diverse films being greenlit and less to do with biased voters, but still an unfortunate truth. Those who so dutifully championed Tangerine this past year are likely feeling the sting of rejection.

Despite nabbing Lead and Supporting nominations, Carol was shut out of the Best Picture and Best Director categories. Ridley Scott was also noticeably absent from the Best Director list for The Martian (which, in case there’s been confusion, is NOT a comedy). Quentin Tarantino might also be feeling a bit overlooked this morning, with only three nominations for The Hateful Eight, but, at least, one is for cinematography, supporting Tarantino’s decision to shoot on 70mm. Star Wars: The Force Awakens asserts itself plenty in technical categories, another unsurprising feat for this box office behemoth.

All in all, it’s not an especially unpredictable list of nominations, but the real fun comes in guessing the winners. The 88th Academy Awards will be held on Feb. 28th and will air at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PST on ABC. Check back for our continued 2016 Academy Awards coverage and read on for the full list of nominees.

List of 2016 Oscar Nominations

Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Actress in a Supporting Role
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Director
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Foreign Language Film
Embrace of the Serpent, Colombia
Mustang, France
Son of Saul, Hungary
Theeb, Jordan
A War,Denmark

Best Animated Feature
Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun The Sheep
When Marnie Was There

Best Screenplay
Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room

Best Documentary
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Editing
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Production Design
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant

Best Original Score
Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Original Song
“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction
“Simple Song No. 3” from Youth
“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground
“Writing’s on the Wall” from Spectre

Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max Fury Road
The 100-Year Old Men Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared
The Revenant

Best Cinematography
Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Hateful Eight
The Revenant
Sicario

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Achievement in Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Costume Design
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant

Best Live Action Short Film
Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)
Shok
Stutterer

Best Documentary Short Subject
Body Team 12
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom

Best Animated Short Film
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow

2015 is wrapping up and looking back on the year there have been a fair amount of films that have been emotionally provoking, but The Big Short is in many ways at least equal to Mad Max in blood-pressure-raising cogency. The nearness of so recent a catastrophe combined with Adam McKay’s blended fact-driven drama and absurd-because-it’s-true comedy, ensures a righteous resentment. The film moves quickly introducing a lot of people and breaking the fourth wall often to explain terminology and provide a high level of self-awareness as characters explain when the film is being truthful and when it’s taking liberties for the sake of moviemaking. This candid storytelling builds a level of trust that feels akin to watching a documentary. The roller coaster ride of not being sure when to laugh at the preposterousness and scope of the events unfolding, or when to cry whenever the realization of their truthfulness sinks in, by far makes for one of the most peerless filmgoing experiences of the year.

Based on Michael Lewis’s bestselling nonfiction book of the same name, the focus of this expose is on the unlikely people who not only predicted the collapse (or bursting, if you will) of the credit and housing bubble that led to the crisis of 2008 and contributed greatly to the longest recession in U.S. history, but who also profited greatly when it happened. There’s the awkward Asperger’s-savant hedge fund investor, Dr. Michael Burry played by Christian Bale, who crunches the numbers and predicts the future, pretty much to the month the collapse will happen. He starts investing his clients’ money, betting against the banks, who happily take it thinking such a thing could never happen. His clients are understandably unhappy with the risk.

Word spreads of his crazy actions and soon Wall Street banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling doing what he does best, faking a New York accent and being as shmarmy as can be) catches wind and wants in on the potentially huge earnings involved, he manages to enlist outspoken hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his team. Baum operates under the umbrella of Morgan Stanley but actively despises the practices of big banks. After doing his research—part of which hilariously involves interviewing strippers on their financial practices in Florida—Baum realizes the truth of the housing bubble and invests. The remaining morally ambiguous underdogs are small timers Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) who started an investment firm out of their garage and are looking to get into the big leagues, without any clout they have to get retired investor Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to do the deals for them. He also agrees out of spite for corporate America and the rest of the film is watching the wool unravel as the banking world parties and denies that anything bad—at least, related to mortgages—could ever happen to them.

It would be easy to focus on the moral ambiguity of the individual men who gained from America’s huge downfall, but the spotlight of The Big Short can’t help but fall on the banks and governmental entities who tried (and in almost every way succeeded) to deny their fraud and negligence. McKay highlights the deceptive nature of the industry even as he pokes fun at it. For instance, the complicated lingo of the banking industry, while possibly useful to those on the inside, is beyond confusing to the layperson, especially when reduced to acronyms. McKay brings in celebrities playing themselves to break down these terms and provide visual explanations. Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, and a naked Margot Robbie explaining terms like “CDO” and “subprime mortgage rates” is as entertaining as it is informative. That said, a film like this would require multiple viewings to fully grasp the full extent of the economic and fiscal theory playing out and the sheer mathematics that explain all that happened. But this isn’t a documentary, and it’s not meant to be viewed as such.

McKay seems to respect that viewers know how this story ends and that as wrapped up as we get in the characters’ schemes to make it rich off of the evil banks, rooting for them is, in fact, rooting for the failure, financial ruin and catastrophic misfortune of the American people. Any criticism of the film would have to be that very little time is spent focusing on what that misfortune looked like for people. Only one shot depicts a family, met earlier in the film, now homeless and living out of a van. But this seems a smart move as the point isn’t to focus on the sadness invoked by such imagery, but instead to hang on to the infuriation that bubbles up as the full extent of awareness and collusion of the banks and the government is revealed. It’s an unprecedented circumstance in American history and the film spells out just how few consequences there were for those responsible.

The star power of the film is overwhelming, even with Pitt providing the least amount of screen time. Carell is the most impressive, proving once again he has depths barely yet tapped. He brings to Baum all the social disregard of The Office’s Michael Scott with the intensity of Foxcatcher’s John du Pont and adding a moral anger that ties it all together amazingly. Christian Bale—never one to go halfway on any character—combines aloofness with the burden of genius to make his detached character perhaps the most sympathy-inspiring. But the real star is by far the director, who almost retroactively makes his comedies like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers seem even more astute now that we’ve been given such a clear example of how deftly he can comically reflect on true-life drama.

It’s easy to dismiss the complicated mess of the housing crises and collapse, shaking our heads at the math and economic intricacy, and McKay seems to know that his film isn’t going to incite retroactive punishment or propel a revolution. The significance of a film like The Big Short isn’t just a much-needed reminder that we the people should always take the time to understand and reflect on how hardships like this occur, but that comedy is a sharp weapon in shaming those who deserve to be called out.

Writer/director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has explained that her film Mustang—which was filmed in Turkey, spoken in Turkish, and labeled a French film because of the country of origin of its director—doesn’t have any alternate foreign language title. Apparently “mustang” is mostly a universal term. In Ergüven’s film, the word couldn’t have been more aptly chosen. If a mustang is an unbroken and unbridled creature, the five young women featured in this film embody exactly that. What starts as a dreamy and playful look at rambunctious and headstrong girls in their youthful prime melds subtly and meaningfully into a powerful view into the barbarously different female experience for women in different parts of our world.

In a small Turkish coastal town, five sisters start their summer break from school by exerting their tenacity and free will, splashing through the beach as they walk home and playing games of chicken with teenaged boys from their school. The youngest of them, Lale (Gunes Sensoy), exhibits the most spunk, determined to match her elder sisters—Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu), Ece (Elit Iscan), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu), and Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan)—in confidence and self-expression. When they arrive home from their last school day, their grandmother (Nihal Koldas) awaits ready to lash out at the girls for their improper behavior, word of which has traveled through the small town amongst local gossips. The girls react strongly, protecting one another from beatings and rushing to tell-off the righteous woman who ratted on them.

Their total dismissal of their grandmother’s reaction is energetically humorous and does well to quickly showcase the tight-knit nature of these five sisters. But this seemingly harmless incident kickstarts a reactionary response from their family—both their grandma and uncle look after the girls who were orphaned years before. It begins tediously enough with the girls being restricted from leaving the house and forced to partake in traditional lessons from their grandmother and other local women. The girls learn to cook and sew and are forced to start wearing modest long brown dresses. They make do, running around the house in bras and underwear, playing games with one another and sneaking out down their drain pipe. The girls are annoyed with the new regime of no computers or phones, but continue to speak their minds and exert their individuality, expressing themselves in rebellions both big and small.

A trip to town one day makes their grandmother’s intentions a bit clearer to the girls. She asks them to walk through the town center displaying the girls to the families and men also there. Clearly the lessons and increased restrictions are measures meant to make the girls more marriable. The two eldest girls are the first to undergo the traditional arrangements, a brief meeting with the family of an eligible boy and a quick betrothal. Sonay manages to bully her grandmother into arranging a marriage with a boy she has already been sneaking around with and fallen for, but her sister is forced to accept the arrangements made for her.

The push from adolescence to adulthood in the film is less coming of age than innocence taken, but Ergüven—who co-wrote the script with Alice Winocour—doesn’t allow the film to wander too far into tragic victimization, instead providing one of the most tenacious films on female empowerment to come out in recent years. As the girls are ripped apart, their connected strength waning, it’s Lale, the youngest, who refuses to accept the fate laid out for her by her elders. And just like that, Mustang moves from being a disturbing cultural insight to an adrenaline pumping getaway.

Despite its rural setting and the rather alien practices performed in the film, Mustang is distinctly contemporary and salient. The judgment on these girls’ feminity and the perceived threat of their sexuality and the urgency to curb it is so incredibly universal. But even more relatable (to a degree) as their oppression is, what is most piercing about Ergüven’s film is the obvious and fierce response of these siblings. Oppression occurs everywhere, but outrage and advocacy do as well. This fight belongs to many in the world, from rural Turkey to New York City, and the film is the best kind of sticking agent, uniting anyone who feels the injustice.

The young actresses of Mustang are critical to its flawlessness, right down to their identically long flowing—and distinctly unbridled-horse-esque—hair. Their chemistry is altogether magical and almost documentary feeling in its sincerity. Ergüven’s light touch allows the film’s inexperienced stars to shine. The film’s pacing is perfect, with quiet moments accenting the isolation of the girls’ house or the many ways in which they bond with one another in their imprisonment. Warren Ellis’s off-kilter score fits the mood, never letting it get too sappy or alternately too rambunctious.

Mustang is France’s entry into this year’s Academy Awards and for sheer surefootedness from its first time director alone, it is sure to be the sort of film that gets attention. And rightly so. In highlighting both the unfortunate extreme of female persecution and also the most extreme courage and perseverance in the face of such inequality, and by making its hero a very young and determined girl, Mustang manages to shed light on the wrongs of today while instilling hope in the tenacity of the future.

Everything about this film is brave, but more significant is the way it imbues bravery on those who watch.

Movies are sometimes easiest to explain in terms of personality. You have your strong, silent types. Your deep and profound types. Your clever and witty types. And of course, unfortunately, the excruciatingly socially awkward types. If Funny Bunny were a person they’d be that guy you avoid desperately at parties. They’d be the person you’d be incredibly tempted to be pulled into an argument with, but know that it’s a fruitless endeavor. Funny Bunny is that person who prides themselves on being as idiosyncratic as possible while simultaneously believing they stand for deep and moral issues. Funny Bunny thinks it’s both complex and interesting. Spoiler alert: it’s neither.

Alison Bagnall now has three films under her directorial belt with Funny Bunny, and having written all three herself—not to mention a fourth, her screenwriting debut Buffalo ’66—it’s easy to decipher her preferred storytelling technique. Which is to create the most unusual people possible, throw them together, add a dash of drama and see what happens. It may boil down to how much weird you can personally handle, or finding bits and pieces of these strange characters to identify with, but, at least in the case of Funny Bunny, it all forms a rather frustrating, incomplete, and just plain gawky viewing experience.

The film begins with quirky character #1, Gene (Kentucker Audley), a divorcee and door-to-door activist raising awareness of the childhood obesity epidemic. During his daily crusading he comes to the house/mini-mansion of quirky character #2, Titty (Olly Alexander), who invites Gene in, runs away giggling and then awkwardly invites him to a sleepover. Gene has enough sense to find that strange, but when his ex-wife and her new man kick Gene out of their house for good, Gene decides to take Titty up on that sleepover offer. Titty is happy to take him in with nary a word about being complete strangers to one another. Titty shows Gene his computer where a girl in a wig, holding a bunny, cries into the camera that she doesn’t have the funds to cover medical expenses for her poor rabbit. Titty eagerly pulls out his credit card and types in the numbers. The girl perks up, thanking him over and over.

Turns out Titty is a trust fund kid who sued his parents and now lives alone, emotionally stunted and harboring some blatant mommy-issues. The girl on the computer screen is quirky character #3, Ginger (Joslyn Jensen), an animal rights activist who spends quite a bit of time in front of her online audience. Titty has developed quite the crush on Ginger and when he tells Gene about his feelings they decide the only logical thing to do is go see her. The two of them jump into Gene’s beat up old van the next day, buy Ginger a new bike, and show up at her back door bright-eyed and eager to make friends. She threatens them with a knife, declaring how creepy their actions are. It’s probably the most true-to-life reaction of the entire film.

Soon enough she comes around and invites the two of them to camp out in her backyard. She introduces them to the animal rights activist she follows and Gene and Titty are privy to a plan to set pigs free from a local farm in protest—though before that a member of the activist group did oddly offer to murder a toddler in the name of the cause. Afterward, Titty, Gene, and Ginger get drunk together and Ginger dances for them in what is a painfully long and puzzling scene.

From here out the script tries to develop some sort of love triangle between Titty, Gene, and Ginger. Each guy gets some alone time with Ginger, and each time she portrays intense signs of trauma and possible former physical abuse when she rejects their physical advances. The film seems as though it may pick up speed when the pig-freeing caper goes wrong for one of the group, but it figures itself out easily enough and the film ends almost without notice.

Bagnall makes some interesting artistic decisions with Funny Bunny, choosing to linger quite long on her subjects. She seems to pride herself on what most would consider painfully extensive scenes of emotional reactions. With so little backstory and such eccentric characteristics defining these characters, it’s almost impossible to understand the depth of these emotional reactions and feel any sympathy. Combined with the in-and-out of focus panning of the camera lens, dark lighting, and lack of music the film is mostly baffling with hardly much to commend it. Jensen is put on the line most, acting Ginger’s passionate and troubled outbursts for extended periods and maintaining the most credibility of these three excessively strange characters.

It isn’t necessarily Bagnall’s attraction to outliers and weirdos in her stories that ultimately hinders Funny Bunny, it’s the alienation that occurs when viewers are asked to empathize and care about the emotional bursts of these strange people simply because they are dramatic. The people of this film may be outlandish, but its plot is so thin that the overall effect is distinctly dull. Somehow, I think even animal rights activists, rich teenagers, and childhood obesity advocates would balk at the proceedings of Funny Bunny, which makes one wonder who out there is this film intended for?

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” An overused adage, yes, but one can’t help but think of it while watching Trumbo, Jay Roach’s film following the most famous of the Hollywood Ten, the film industry professionals blacklisted during the communist scare of post-World War II America. But the fact that the film conjures up played out inspirational quotation rather speaks to the film’s methods in portraying Dalton Trumbo’s subversive and clever discrediting of the blacklist. This is clearly an important historical tale and Hollywood loves nothing more than it loves stories about itself, but it’s this assumed dignity that ultimately lessens the impact of the film and detracts from the very real significance of what Trumbo accomplished.

Roach has a rather focused directorial collection ranging mostly from comedy (Meet the Parents) to fact-based politicals (Game Change), his interest in wit and politics is clear. In this regard Dalton Trumbo is understandably attractive. John McNamara—known mostly for his TV writing—adapted a script from Bruce Cook’s novel Dalton Trumbo, and maybe it’s because the film takes place over the entire span of the blacklist’s inception in 1947 to its eventual dissolution around 1960 that the film’s pacing does feel a bit episodic in bursts of plot development. Trumbo’s strength lies in Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of Dalton Trumbo, his wide mouth and dramatic facial features giving an amount of gravitas to this quick-witted writer.

The film flies, barely giving us a chance to get to know the group that makes up those who are starting to speak out against the wave of conservative nationalism flowing through Hollywood, headed by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). Trumbo is at the height of his career and making more than any screenwriter in Hollywood ever has, but his penchant for wearing his political beliefs on his sleeve quickly pushes him into the spotlight. Russia has turned from being a WWII ally to an elusive threat as the beginnings of the Cold War push at the growing paranoia in America. Much of this is shown in newsreel soundbites and meetings held by Trumbo with his colleagues in the industry who also identify as either Communist or liberal. It doesn’t take long for Trumbo and his associates, among them Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.) a fellow screenwriter, to be brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee to explain themselves. The now famous Hollywood Ten refused to reveal their personal affiliations and called into the question the constitutionality of such a hearing, as a result several of them went to jail, were fined, and most significantly were fired and/or stigmatized to the point of losing their livelihoods.

The film takes a more dramatic turn when Trumbo serves his time in prison, reflecting on the personal struggle of prison life and that of his family surviving without him back home. Diane Lane plays Cleo, Trumbo’s sweet, supportive and perhaps too tame wife. When he finally comes home from prison almost a year later, it’s Trumbo’s eldest daughter Niki (Elle Fanning) who becomes the film’s other strong character, a contrived decision attempting to better paint Trumbo as both family man and hero. Trumbo enacts a plan that allows him to continue writing—a craft he seems supernaturally good at—and allows him to undermine the blacklist as well. He begins writing for Frank King (John Goodman), a B-movie filmmaker who happily trades Trumbo’s talent for small money, no credit, and a shot to get Trumbo’s movies made. Trumbo begins a sort of screenwriting factory, cranking out originals and doctoring those that need work, enlisting his fellow blacklisters to help. It isn’t long until his pseudonym-written scripts pick up some attention. The man can’t help but be talented.

It would be great to take away from all of this that true talent shines, or right will prevail, or one rock can fell a mighty giant, except that what ultimately allows Trumbo to discredit the blacklist is the combined consciences of several others in the industry who supported him, most notably Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas. So while Trumbo certainly got a sort of revenge on those who imprisoned and blacklisted him, it was the growing evidence that McCarthy’s scare-tactics weren’t leading to any hard evidence of espionage within the film industry. The truth of this doesn’t detract from Trumbo’s role, but ideally the film would have opted for a more humble approach than spotlight the cleverness of its subject.

The film has a distinct lighting scheme and familiar musical mood, very clearly trying to invoke an old Hollywood nostalgia, but mostly working to make the film far too cartoonish. The introduction of historical figures at every point feels like name-dropping and self-congratulatory (no matter how much Dean O’Gorman looks like Kirk Douglas) and the film’s distinct self-love for the industry seems out of place in a story depicting that industry’s darkest hour. At one point in the film Louis C.K.’s Arlen Hird says to Trumbo “Do you have to say everything like it’s going to be chiseled into a rock?” and this sentiment speaks more to the entire film than anything else muttered.

It’s interesting to note that there will be—and indeed already have been—those who want to remind us that Trumbo’s writing was ripe with socialist messages, as if this proves his complicity in some masterful scheme and marks him as not entirely clean of guilt. Considering the philosophical beginnings of Communism, it hardly seems duplicitous that one would include its main themes in storytelling. If everyone were to feel equally as sensitive to biblical themes in film, there’d be hardly a movie out there that didn’t appear to be propaganda. There may be an amount of historical re-writing, but this hardly seems the film’s worst quality, instead it’s that Trumbo draws a larger picture of its title character than it does the entire tragedy and injustice that propelled him.

Without that level of context Trumbo is reasonably enjoyable, but mostly begs that there be a better film made at least equal to what this Oscar-winning man could have come up with.

Stories centered around the American immigration experience in many ways seem akin to the creation myths of much older countries. But whereas gods and goddesses may have divined their countries from the stars or sea or some other mysticism, America was built slowly over time. Be it migrant Asian natives who would form the beginnings of Native America, wandering from a now non-existent peninsula 24,000 years ago, or the slow but steady trickle of peoples from every nation on the planet seeking shelter, work, and freedom. Nothing inspires American pride more than tales of how we got here. John Crowley‘s Brooklyn isn’t exactly a creation story, in fact, it takes place in the ’50s years after the immigration boom to America, but this story—adapted by Nick Hornby from Colm Tóibín’s novel—encompasses that very real part of being American: balancing history with the future and learning to belong.

The young woman walking that fine line is Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish girl who is given the chance to move to America when job prospects in her small Irish town run dry. Her part-time job working in a convenience store is easy to say goodbye to—what with her boss being a stuck up gossip and all—and even her friends have romantic prospects and more contentment in their small town life. The hardest part for Eilis is leaving her elder sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) behind with their mother Mary (Jane Brennan), but she is assured by Rose that this is the right decision.

So Eilis departs, traversing literal rough seas on the voyage to America. Her bunkmate aboard the ship advises her, giving her a crash course in how to survive being alone in America so far from home. But nothing really prepares Eilis for just how homesick she becomes. Her boarding house-mother, Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters), holds nightly dinners, and these scenes are by far the most hilarious of the film, perfectly showcasing the variety of young women making their way in America, from old-fashioned to flashy and stylish. Mrs. Kehoe is the perfect blend of old Irish propriety curbed with sharp modern spunk and the way she chides Eilis’s more rambunctious cohorts and advises the girls on their skin regimens is just one of many great examples in the film of the way the women around Eilis are her greatest support system. When Eilis’s homesickness pushes her to sullen depression it prompts her new boss, Miss Fortini (Mad Men‘s Jessica Paré), to call in the priest who sponsored Eilis’s trip to America. Jim Broadbent plays Father Flood, who enrolls Eilis in a bookkeeping school in order to give her something to focus on to distract her from her sadness.

The plan works remarkably and as Eilis begins to invest in her future she starts to let down her guard. At a church dance one Saturday night Eilis is asked to dance by Tony (Emory Cohen), a young man who is instantly quite taken with Eilis’s quiet charm and fierce intelligence. He pursues her vigilantly, and to Eilis he is so completely American. His family is Italian, but their cultural background differences only make them more drawn to one another. Eilis’s spirits raise considerably—her wardrobe even brightens, and indeed the costume design is among the many details that elevate the film—and she and Tony allow themselves to fall head over heels.

But when tragedy strikes back home in Ireland, Eilis is thrust back into her previous world, and when she returns home she has to face her old life as a new person. Ronan magnificently portrays Eilis’s depth of feeling and inner struggle with choosing what sort of life she wants to mold for herself. Now an independent young woman, she finds herself to be more desirable than ever back home and she is given very real temptation in the form of Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), a tall and successful young Irishman who seems to have the same sort of ambition as Eilis combined with a love for their home country.

Eilis’s decision essentially boils down to choosing whether she wants to choose to be Irish or Irish-American, each choice attached to a very different man who promises a very different future from the other. This conundrum feels so very close to the heart of American patriotism. That those who formed this country, whether it was on the Mayflower or many years later as an immigrant, each had to choose to be American. Crowley keeps Eilis’s decision harrowing to the end, maintaining that it isn’t necessarily about choosing correctly, as there is no clear path, it’s about choosing one’s own identity.

Brooklyn is at once inherently American and incredibly multi-cultural, showcasing just how intricate and emotional the immigration experience was for many who came to this country. That it uses the perspective of an empowered and vibrant young Irish woman is what makes Brooklyn an excellent story. It’s an across-the-ocean love triangle yes, but it’s the battle within Eilis that is most interesting. Yves Bélanger’s cinematography makes 1950’s Brooklyn both exciting and alien at first but ultimately more romantic as Eilis’s experience there changes. The imagery of Ireland feels much more spacious, open and home-like. Ultimately the film is beautiful, but it’s Ronan’s sparkling eyes and subtle expressions that cause not only Tony and Jim to fall in love with her, but in fact everyone else in the film and all in the audience as well.

A perfectly crafted romance and pride-inducing immigration tale, Brooklyn feels very much like reading an engaging book. One you just can’t put down and immediately want to re-read once it’s finished.

Split almost perfectly down its center, Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, based on the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue, is equal parts heart-stopping thriller and emotionally visceral drama. Few films are as effectively stomach-churning while sustaining emotional connectedness in so compelling a manner. This is what is possible when a novel is perfectly translated to screen and, like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl screenplay adaptation last year, holds up a keen argument for authors adapting their own work. A far cry from Abrahamson’s decidedly weirder film entry of last year, Frank, Room is an insular (literally) account of a young woman, Ma (Brie Larson, being amazing), doing her best to raise her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay, almost stealing the show) in the tiny one-room shack where they are held captive. Pushed to her breaking point and fearing for her son’s safety, Ma is finally driven to enact a harrowing plan to help her son escape and experience the world outside of “room.”

Abrahamson spends the film’s first act focused on the intricacies of life in a tiny room and the inventive and loving ways Ma has devised to keep her son healthy and happy. She cooks him meals on a hot plate, breastfeeds him for added sustenance, and leads him through yoga and running exercises around the room. Through expert use of Jack’s first person narrative scattered throughout the film, we see “room” through his five-year-old eyes. The toilet, the chairs, the television and the wardrobe he often sleeps in all take on distinct and special characteristics as they make up the entirety of Jack’s universe and everything he’s ever known. But most important of all is Ma, and the bond between mother and son is strong and almost feral.

In watching their lives it becomes clear that in the seven years Ma has spent in “room,” and the five that Jack has, a routine has developed. Each night Ma tucks Jack away into the wardrobe, doing her best to shelter him from her captor, Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), when he makes his nightly visit to Ma to take advantage of her. Jack knows the drill, but curiosity gets the better of him one night and he climbs out to have a look at the only other human being he’s ever seen. Ma awakes to find Nick talking to Jack and reacts with a fierce protectiveness. She pays the price and decides once and for all something must be done.

The plan for escape in the film is equal in anxiety to any great heist film, more so because it’s experienced mostly through Jack’s scared understanding of what he is doing. The entire plan rests on him to act, but more than that it relies on him accepting this new truth his mother is revealing to him that there is an entire universe outside of “room” and he needs to choose to leave everything he knows and loves, including his mother. There isn’t an audience alive that won’t be gripping their armrests as the escape scene plays out, and without revealing too much about how the film continues, suffice it to say that Ma and Jack face an entirely new set of demons once they are out in the real world.

The intimate nature of the narrative is what especially allows for the emotional connection one feels for Ma and Jack. They represent the fear everyone shares at being violated so profoundly by another human. One can’t help but imagine what they would attempt or feel in a similar situation. How can anyone prepare for such a thing? Equally so, how can we predict the physical and emotional effects and how they will manifest in the years following such trauma? Jack shows us the resilient nature of children in the way he begins to accept the new world he is experiencing, while Ma is haunted by the world she knew before her kidnapping and how it can never be the same. And both have to get used to a world full of judgment and expectation and an inability to truly understand their experience.

Obviously the film’s writing is what sets it up for success, but Larson and Tremblay’s performances are what elevate this film to perfection and sure-fire award candidacy. Larson manages to juggle portraying an abused woman, a fierce mother, and a PTSD-afflicted young woman who wasn’t allowed to complete her own childhood. Tremblay, and his perfect little lips, expresses the entire range of a five-year-old: wonder, excitement, stubbornness, fear, and child-like unadulterated love. His courage is astounding and the chemistry between Larson and himself is palpable.

There are a few unexplored story threads in the second half that leave us wanting, most especially between Ma and her father played by William H. Macy. And, of course, it’s difficult for there to be a truly satisfying stopping point to the film, as one becomes so attached and invested in the characters it’s natural to wish we could see how their entire lives play out. The film’s lens stays close on its subjects, contributing to the claustrophobic but intimate relationship of its lead characters. The cinematography is a wash of blue and green but manages not to be depressing with its drab scheme.

Room is certainly among the year’s essential viewing and while some may be quick to label it a “difficult watch,” such a description neglects the ultimately life-affirming and passionately affecting story told. Abrahamson has done an amazing job in inviting viewers to consider one of those potentialities no one likes to think about, engaging us with a deeply personal and fantastically told tale of survival and familial bond.

Reed Morano, a successful cinematographer, takes her first shot at directing with Meadowland. And it may be because she’s so cinematically inclined, or perhaps she has a dark side the public is getting a taste of here, but she’s chosen some truly heavy material from Chris Rossi (also his first) to kickstart her directorial career. Granted, drama makes for plenty of opportunity to play with the camera, and she certainly does, providing dreamy, close-up, mood all over the place. And it may be because she usually only has control of the camerawork of a film that she felt so inclined to rev up the other sensory experiences of the film to maximum intensity.

The film is about Sarah and Phil (Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson) who, at the film’s outset, are struck the heavy blow of having their only son kidnapped. Flash forward a year and Phil is back at work as a cop, dealing with his grief with the occasional support group meeting and lunches with a friend who lost his daughter (John Leguizamo). Sarah, on the other hand, stays fairly numb with the help of lithium, barely passing for a teacher at the grade school she teaches at. Clearly these two have chosen the grieve alone path, Sarah often wandering around Times Square late at night, not necessarily searching so much as distracting herself, and Phil parking outside the gas station where their son disappeared as though he may wander back in the dead of night.

The detective on their case presents some new evidence that suggests what neither, though Sarah especially, want to hear. In her own misguided attempt to avoid reality she goes to cringe-worthy extremes leading to a belligerent and uncomfortable end. Grief manifests differently for everyone, especially in the circumstance of a cold case where the absence of concrete evidence doesn’t allow for proper grief, but Sarah’s self-destruction is especially difficult to watch. Morano also makes it quite hard to listen to. The music and sound design of the film are pumped up so high at parts it hurts. What’s meant to be a distraction tactic for the characters is just plain wearisome for the viewer.

Calling the film a bummer is an understatement. Wilde is convincingly inconsolable—and a bit crazy—in what is clearly meant to be a showcase of her talent, but in the hands of Morano, we’re rather hit in the head with it repeatedly. Wilson is of course the easier to sympathize with, those trademark Wilson puppy dog eyes playing to his advantage, but Rossi could have written Phil with more backbone to counter Sarah’s intensity better. As is, the two don’t have much in the way of chemistry, or even a believable animosity befitting their situation. They are more like two characters sharing the same story by chance.

Rossi wrote a script exploring the most gruesome depths of repressed grief, Morano certainly pulled it out of the actors and added further intensity with her blurry focus and pore-revealing intimacy in almost every scene, throw in the ear-assault and too-serious actions of the characters and it stops being insightful and starts being a bit scary. The film does a full stop at the very end, attempting to bring the mood back up with a slipshod scene that feels so much like a therapy session it’s laughable. Sorry Morano, you can’t assail viewers for 90 minutes and not expect them to be numb by the end to any ploy at pulling at heartstrings. Like Rossi’s characters, we can’t help but follow their lead and remain neatly anesthetized.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

It can’t be entirely coincidental that last year’s breakout horror film, The Babadook, was centered around the frustrating and intimate relationship of a mother and her child and this year’s best horror film—it’s true, I’m putting it in writing—is very similarly themed. In Goodnight Mommy, from Austrian directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz who also wrote the script, instead of a mother wary of her high-strung child, two twin brothers become suspicious of their mother when she returns from plastic surgery with her face in bandages. What The Babadook did so brilliantly was to fluctuate between two horror-mother norms: the mother as savior (think Poltergeist’s Diane Freeling) and the mother as an evil threat (think Carrie’s Margaret White). Goodnight Mommy similarly plays with these horror expectations of mothers but keeps its audience guessing by placing the vantage point in the immature, and therefore unreliable, eyes of two nine-year-old twin boys.

With no sense of what the children’s mother (Susanne Wuest) was like before she arrives back home in full facial bandages, the film is immediately set up for our trust to lie wholly with Elias and Lukas (Elias Schwarz and Lukas Schwarz), a pair of boys who love to roam the woods and fields around their country home, collecting bugs and caring for animals. When their mother returns after surgery—and through an awkward guessing game she plays with the boys it’s revealed she’s a famous TV personality, so it’s likely cosmetic—the boys take the brunt of her sudden mood swings and apparent preferential treatment of one twin over the other. She is volatile and unreasonably strict. When her behavior gets stranger and her temper more intense, the boys—their insatiable curiosity evident—test their mother and track her behavior in an attempt to prove their theory.

The film picks up—and indeed shifts darkly—in its second half when the boys plan, first, to escape the intruder they believe is posing as their mother, and then when that fails, to take action into their own hands to get answers. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, things get squirmy. Even more squirmy because of the constant question of whether or not the violence is or is not deserved. There’s an excellent eleventh-hour reveal that this viewer certainly did not predict and certainly won’t elaborate on. Suffice it to say the film excellently holds focus to divert from the reality of the situation.

The Schwarz brothers carry the film incredibly well for their age and the relatively small amount of dialogue involved. Their constant discomfort at trying first to please their mother and understand her actions, and then at the dawning terror of believing she isn’t who they think, is perfectly conveyed in their nine-year-old fidgeting and wide eyes. They constantly convey that childlike hesitancy in questioning elders or believing a family member could ever be capable of anything but loving behavior. And when things get serious it’s that innocent quality that amplifies the horror of their behavior. It’s so easy for children to be evil in horror films, something we’ve come to expect even, and Fiala and Franz don’t let the boys fall squarely into that space. Their intentions—to get their mother back—are so pure it’s hard not to justify the actions of a pair of scared (and perhaps too imaginative) little boys.

The boys’ imaginations are used throughout the film, often practically as they invent new ways of testing and keeping an eye on their maybe-faux-mother, but also literally in scenes that are revealed to actually be dreams. Normally the use of false-reality sequences in horror films feel like cheap scares, showing supernatural elements in order to trick us into thinking we understand what’s happening, only to be yanked back into the present and be just as confused as ever. But Fiala and Franz use these moments sparingly and add plausibility by making it so easy to believe children have vivid and scary dreams. The effective and limited use of music also gives a sense of realism that enhances the tension and blurs the line between what is real and what isn’t. Cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, shooting on 35-milimeter, frames the stoic modern house with its wide windows against the many outdoor scenes of the boys playing in yellow fields, jumping on drying mud, and winding through corn fields and tree-filled forests. The distinction clearly implying the serene safety of the outside versus the cold grey uncertainty of their mother’s home.

At all moments a deftly crafted mystery and with thoughtful scares and the sort of shocks that don’t feel extraneous, Goodnight Mommy is a must-see for anyone who appreciates sustained suspense, and who maybe doesn’t mind a trip to a masseuse after to get all that tension worked out. A repeat viewing feels necessary to watch the film with fresh eyes after the truth is revealed, and if mandatory repeat watching isn’t the mark of a good film, I don’t know what is.

Goodnight Mommy is currently playing in NY, LA, and Austin and will open in additional cities September 25, 2015. 

You won’t catch me complaining about rom-coms or decrying the genre as lifeless, well-worn, or ready for bed. One cannot blame a film genre for the laziness of writers, directors, and narrow-minded studios. The same trends we see in consumer products apply to filmmaking. If it works, mass produce it until the market oversaturates and the people demand something new. Leslye Headland is demanding something different. Demanding, and making. Her sophomore film—a follow up to 2012’s Bachelorette—Sleeping With Other People is rom-com 2.0. Or 10.0, who knows which iteration we’re really on, all I know is we are ready for it. Headland must have decided unrealistic banter, comedy based on error and miscommunication, and men being the only ones allowed to misuse sex was getting old. All of which I tend to agree with.

In Sleeping With Other People, Headland, who also wrote the film, presents the “just friends” scenario and frees it up to be honest and self-aware, making for that rare and highly sought after rom-com combo: emotionally fulfilling AND hilarious.  If there is such thing as “organic” comedy, this is it. No one is genetically modifying the laughs in this film, they are all entirely deserved. Does that mean she goes light on the raunch or wickedness? Not for a second.

Starring Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis, much of the film’s success falls on their mutual magnetism. Brie plays Lainey (but don’t worry she’s nothing like Laney Boggs from She’s All That), a kindergarten teacher with a longtime addiction to her always-unavailable college crush Matthew (Adam Scott). Lainey runs into the guy she lost her virginity to in college, Jake (Sudeikis), at a sex addicts meeting. Since their one-night tryst in college he’s become your typical serial polygamist, successful in his career—he’s just sold his startup to a large corporation led by a sexy CEO (Amanda Peet) he’s determined to nail—and totally absorbed in his sexual amusements. Jake and Lainey attempt a date but decide their mutual attraction will only feed into each other’s bad habit of abusing sex, deciding instead to remain friends.

What ensues is a modern update on When Harry Met Sally’s cynical approach to male-female friendships. Lainey and Jake keep the lines of communication between each other wide open, and similar to Meg Ryan’s famously enlightening lesson on the fake orgasms of woman, this film’s most talked about scene is likely to be when Jake goes into an in-depth (and visually illustrated) lesson on female masturbation. The two are so communicative as to inform each other when they are feeling attracted to the other, developing a safe-word: “mousetrap.”

The real heart of the film lies in their growing friendship and their increased dependence on one another. It’s a modern comedy that allows its characters to fall in love naturally, without the pressure of sex, while also providing plenty of sex throughout the film (with other people). The comedy of the film comes entirely from its honesty and openness, proving that mishaps, mistakes, and misperceptions aren’t the only way for romantic films to utilize comedy.

The dialog pushes Headland’s film far out of the realm of the usual rom-com as well. Not because it’s not bantery, but because the banter is surprising and realistically clever—with all the speed of Sorkin and the referential easter eggs of Gilmore Girls drained of un-believability. Contemporary audiences will appreciate the Millennial-style straight-forwardness and Lainey and Jake’s no-holds-barred conversation style. Throw in some irreverence—like taking drugs at a kid’s birthday party or Lainey’s adulterous weaknesses or Jake’s hesitancy in describing sex with a black woman—and it all adds up to a perfectly balanced amount of laughter and well-built romance.

Brie’s usual sweetness, most evidenced in her role in TV show Community, is balanced with some of the spirit we see her exhibit in AMC’s Mad Men as Trudy Campbell. She’s not a sucker, although she often returns to her hopeless romance with a married man, instead she’s a woman whose sexual desires have only been met by one man and she’s never known what it is to have emotional and sexual fulfillment in the same place. She’s not a victim, she never needs saving, she just needs a friend.

Sudeikis is also impressive, reigning in any lingering SNL silliness and playing as believably sexy and flawed, but not despicable. He could easily have made Jake appear creepy,—taking advantage of Lainey’s friendship—or pitiful—falling for a girl he may never get—but he stays equal parts damaged and dashing at all times.

They are surrounded by a great supporting cast including Jason Mantzoukas in my favorite role of his yet, and Natasha Lyonne playing both the mandatory best friend and mandatory gay best friend all at once, even if she’s not wholly believable as Lainey’s best friend. Adam Scott also plays against type as a nerdy scumbag, and Adam Brody goes big in his one early scene with Brie to hilarious effect.

The possibilities in romantic scenarios will never cease (though most romantic comedies tend to navigate to the same three or four), and Headland turns to one we’ve seen plenty of times before—the friendship-turned-romantic situation—but her approach is outgoing and unrestrained, not only with her humor but in the total transparency between her lead characters. These characters may be more clever than most people we know, more attractive, and more successful, but their friendship feels relatable and their flaws are actual which makes for heartier laughs and an aphrodisiacal love story.

A version of this review first ran as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage. 

What is it about Jackie Chan that makes him the most lovable person on the planet? If you consider other action stars, like Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger or even Bruce Lee, they just don’t exude that same cheerful charisma that Chan has. If  anyone could deliver some martial arts driven world peace, it’s him. And in his latest action epic, Dragon Blade, that’s exactly what his character, Huo An, wants to do.

Daniel Lee directs this grandiose spectacle of a historical action film and the ornate detail put into the visuals of the film are truly mesmerizing…and utterly distracting. Clearly Lee, who also wrote the film, is attempting to use the historical allure of the Silk Road and the mingling of cultures along that road to present a message of unity—no matter the rather loose historical accuracy of the events depicted or the bombast with which he presents it all. Dragon Blade is a thoroughly enjoyable film with laugh-out-loud moments, almost all of which I assume the director did not intend. The same slow motion glory with which the film’s final epic battle plays out also works to highlight every jowel-ripple moving across John Cusack’s face as he rides horseback. Proof positive that enhanced visual effects don’t always enhance a film’s quality.

Supposedly based on a historical person, Chan’s Huo An leads the Silk Road Protection Squad, peacekeepers of the Silk Road, whose mission is to prevent those many cultural clashes bound to happen on a busy trade road. In the film’s opening Chan hilariously faces off against the leader of one such clan, Cold Moon (Peng Lin), about to engage in a desert scuffle. Using fancy footwork and his forearm shield, he makes avoiding fighting this woman look amazingly intricate, showcasing that despite his age—61 and not quite doing all his own stunts anymore—Chan definitely still has it.

That crisis is averted but someone has it in for the Protection Squad and they are wrongly accused of corrupt practices and exiled to Goose Gate, a fortress along the Road in a state of disrepair. All the various cultures found in the area are represented, Hun, Indians, Turks, Mongols and more, and all are forced to work alongside each other to rebuild the city wall. Which of course leads to opportunity for the Protection Squad to use their training, albeit unappreciated by the others until the day a Roman army—led by John Cusack and his slow-mo’d jowels—shows up to invade. Huo An comes to the rescue, facing Roman leader Lucius (Cusack) in a sword fight and offering sanctuary when a sandstorm cuts their dual short.

In a rather quick turn of events, Lucius and Huo An form a sort of friendship. Lucius is traveling with deserted Roman army soldiers and a blind young Roman prince, Publius (played by Chinese child actor Jozef Waite turned blonde Roman and weirdly creepy), who is pursued by his tyrannical older brother Tiberius who has overthrown his own father and blinded his brother. In exchange for shelter and in preparation for Tiberius’s arrival, the Roman soldiers and workers of Goose Gate band together, using Roman technology to rebuild the city in a very short amount of time, and simultaneously learning the efficiency and joy of working as a team. If it wasn’t so elaborately shot and costumed, it would be a perfect fit for a Sesame Street segment.

Tiberius does indeed show up, clad in perfect Roman curls and played at his villanous best by Adrien Brody. The script shifts dramatically at this point, and after all the friendship-forming and singing—no, literally there is an extended scene where each of the different tribes sing the songs of their people and show their respects to one another—the sudden gruesomeness that ensues is dark indeed. Apparently that world peace Huo An seeks won’t happen without a fair amount of blood shed, all of which elicits laughs rather than gasps due to its over-the-top entrance into the film.

There is a satisfying showdown and large-scale battle to round out the film but once again the magnitude of it all detracts from any connection to the so-called story. Huo An remains the sole character for whom we hold any real connection, but the degree of his suffering hardly makes the battle feel worth winning. Strangely all criticism of Cusack or Brody has entirely to do with the writing material they were given and the silliness they are thrust into at moments. Amazingly, and this is of course a testament to Chan’s remarkable choreographic abilities, both men look completely at ease and totally tough in their fantastic fight scenes.

Any reason for seeing Dragon Blade lies firmly within a respect and adoration of Jackie Chan and relies on one’s ability to be patient waiting for the fight scenes. The film’s themes are as overt as a round-house kick to the face and no one who sees this film will be able to escape walking away feeling like they were subjected to the film equivalent of two hours on It’s a Small World—you know, but with blood and gore.

Jackie Chan fans can deal with the cheese that often accompanies the thrill of seeing the man in action, and those who like ornate flourishes may not mind the film’s style, but mostly this film’s biggest assets are the strange combo of Chan, Cusack and Brody and the accidental hilarity of a frilly film taking itself seriously. And perhaps there is a lesson in Dragon Blade after all. World peace may not equate to “good” guys winning over “bad” guys, or the people of the world combining in a united cause—it may simply be a matter of everyone getting over themselves and having a laugh.

The allure of a dystopian-set film usually seems to lie in its many opportunities for action, cutthroat survival, zombies/talking monkeys/other evolutionary developments, and the always popular spectacle of seeing well-known cultural landmarks in ruin. I will admit that’s not why I keep coming back for them. I’m a junkie for relational dynamics in extreme duress and social psychology experimentation isn’t a career path I’m all that cut out for, so apocalyptic films it is.

Judging by its poster—which mostly consists of the faces of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, and Chris Pine in blue-tinted, love-triangle infused expressions of seriousness–it’s easy not to pick up on the genre of Z For Zachariah. With nary an upturned Statue of Liberty, decaying zombie, or even a single action scene to speak of, it is actually post-apocalyptic. And while, yes, there is a love triangle at the center of the conflict, that these may just be the last three people on earth, that they are essentially strangers to one another, and that survival instincts turn people into manipulative creatures, all make for a nuanced psychological drama.

This is no Katniss, Peeta, Gale situation. Where Z For Zachariah excels is in its lack of outright drama. A lot like his 2012 film Compliance, Craig Zobel has fashioned another film where, when the credits roll, you realize you’d been holding your breath a great long while.

The film begins with Ann, played in an ambiguous state of early adulthood by Margot Robbie. Clad in a plastic suit with a portable oxygen tank, she searches for supplies and peruses books in the now dilapidated library. A few obligatory tableaus of dusty school rooms, empty grocery stores, etc. set the stage of the abandoned world Ann lives in. She makes her way home on a dirt road, removing her mask only once she’s gotten far enough away from the town. For whatever reason, the valley where her family farm, deep water well, and family church are all located is a safe place to breathe and live. And as a farm-raised girl, Ann has the know-how to stay alive despite being on her own.

Between Katniss and Ann, I’m starting to think the South may be the place to head in the case of impending worldwide destruction.

Ann’s contained and lonesome world expands considerably when she comes across a person in a hazmat suit. This scientist (Ejiofor) tests the air and plant life as Ann watches on in wonder. When he deems it safe, he rips off his suit, gulps the clean air and then rather over-exuberantly plunges into a nearby waterfall. Not realizing the water in this particular stream isn’t safe for jumping around in, Ann ends up having to nurse him back to health after he gets sick from radiation poisoning, taking him back to her farm to recoup.

Ann and the scientist named Loomis form a friendship, her demeanor one of sweet God-fearing Southerner, savvy in agricultural arts, he a science-fearing intrepid intellectual good at building. Once his strength returns he pitches in, helping Ann get farm equipment up and running and concocting a plan to utilize the waterfall to power the defunct generator. Ann is grateful, but overall more interested in there being another person alive in her world. Her family all left, apparently unsatisfied with sitting tight, feeling it their duty to search for survivors.

It doesn’t take long for Ann to try and use her unpracticed skills of seduction on Loomis. He admits to an attraction, but slows her down. After all they have forever to get to know one another uninterrupted, right? Enter an interruption. Covered in soot and a horrible haircut, Chris Pine’s Caleb appears. His familiarity with the area and good Christian manners immediately appeal to Ann’s sense of Southern hospitality. And with his charm, masculinity, and subtle passive aggression he becomes an instant threat to Loomis’s short-lived utopian fairytale.

Nissar Modi’s script, based on the novel by Robert C. O’Brien, doesn’t catapult into territorial insecurity or any form of violence, allowing a tentative and flimsy sort of trust to slowly build between the characters. Even as Loomis identifies that there is an obvious affinity forming between Ann and Caleb, his distrust lies within his inherent understanding of the way men behave in this new world. Ann has avoided some of the more psychologically disturbing aspects of what appears to be a nuclear holocaust, and Loomis has avoided telling her much of the outside world. When he tries to open up to her about this in order to prove his credulity toward Caleb, it only backfires by making her question what she knows of the man she thinks she loves.

Ejiofor plays Loomis’s descent from hopeful to threatened, capturing a primal and more subdued sort of survival mode. Survival against the possibility of threat in a world where one needs to be two steps ahead. As he and Caleb and Ann build the watermill that will ensure they survive the winter, Loomis and Caleb test each other, trying to decide what sort of threat the other is. Ann is relatively naive to the danger felt whenever Loomis and Caleb are onscreen together, but Robbie does a good job of conveying both Ann’s innocence to romantic entanglement and her skillful aptitude for survival. Caleb remains a mostly unexplored character, playing his role as the unknown quantity, the masked threat more frightening because of all he doesn’t say. Pine’s playful smile and knowing eyes perfectly convey the creepy seduction Caleb uses to woo Ann and to disarm Loomis.

The racial dynamics of the threesome isn’t overtly explored in any real depth, but Zobel does some diligence, such as a scene where Loomis gives Ann permission to “go be white people” together with Caleb. It’s funny, if not profound, and Ann’s innocent response of confusion doesn’t do much to continue the conversation. In the end the film sticks to themes around compatibility vs. attraction, religion vs. science, and the moral implications of following one’s instincts to circumvent a threat. The film’s climax is both tense and ambiguous, leaving a severe discomfort from its refusal to point to anything clear. But that’s another staple of any good dystopia: the paths aren’t clear and the compasses don’t work.

Not everyone holds the campy horror art form of ’80s slasher films in as high esteem as a few of us over here at Way Too Indie. But if you know anything about this pivotal direction in the history of horror, you may recall it was the first to introduce the concept of The Final Girl, referring to the female protagonist who takes a stand and defeats the (often masked) threat plaguing her and her friends/family/campers. It was a bit of a leap as far as feminism in horror films go, even if said characters had to abide by certain rules, such as remaining virginal to the end and thus deserving of victory. Baby steps, right?

Writers  M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller have found the inherent hilarity present in almost every slasher film and written a sort of meta spoof capitalizing on this unique genre. In this first trailer for The Final Girls from director Todd Strauss-Schulson, four friends at a movie marathon of a popular ’80s slasher franchise—starring the lead character’s (Taissa Farmiga) recently deceased scream-queen mother (Malin Akerman)—find themselves pushed into the film and forced to live out its plot to find their way out. Doing their best to keep everyone alive along the way while pursued by Billy the masked bad guy.

Due in theaters October 9, The Final Girls looks to be a refreshing addition to the slew of horror films pushed on us that time of year. Finally, a horror film you’re supposed to laugh at.

Those of us addicted to AMC’s The Walking Dead tuned in warily but eagerly last night for the premiere of Fear The Walking Dead—a title I’m still not crazy about—to see if creators Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson could bring us new (fresh?) scares and an intriguing prequel storyline to compliment those bedraggled Southerners we love so much. In many ways this new series feels almost like Kirkman appealing to Hollywood more than to his fans, even to the point of setting the story in Los Angeles and focusing much of the first episode around junkie Nick Clark (Frank Dillane). And this is the only major stumbling block of the pilot, not enough walkers, way too much family drama.

The diverse family dynamic certainly makes for quite a few characters, which is a smart move in that those of us familiar with The Walking Dead will know that starting with a crowd means more people to choose from when the significant deaths start happening. Gruesome? Yes, but it’s the way of the walker world we’ve come to know. The pilot started and ended with a newly deceased walker—which may not end up being what we even call these zombies in this new show—but otherwise followed Kim Dickens’ Madison Clark, a school guidance counselor mostly concerned with her junkie son, Nick, and vaguely aware of the subtle signs around her that something major is happening in LA. One of those signs is that a lot of her students aren’t showing up for school, blamed on a bad strain of the flu going around.

When Madison isn’t at the hospital with Nick—where he insists he wasn’t hallucinating and did indeed stumble upon his girlfriend eating the face off a junkie in the church they were crashing at—she’s trying to get through to her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who is going through an all too familiar, just-need-to-get-to-college phase. Madison’s live-in boyfriend (soon-to-be-husband?) Travis (Cliff Curtis) is the only one who thinks to check out Nick’s crazy story about cannibalistic girlfriends and finds a gruesome sight at the church to back it up. (You’d think the cops would also follow-up on that. LAPD, amiright?) Madison insists Travis keep his findings to himself so as not to “enable” Nick. And thus the zombie apocalypse begins, and our main characters write it off as either the flu or a drug-fueled hallucination.

Granted, the show couldn’t jump right into survival mode. The epidemic didn’t likely happen over night, but it also didn’t take that long. Rick Grimes woke up about a month after things got started and the world was already a pretty dismal place by then. Getting to see how news of the epidemic spread initially, and the reaction of a city as large as Los Angeles, is what I’m most intrigued to find out about, but the first episode was incredibly insular. As a devoted watcher of The Walking Dead, it was hard not feel a lot smarter than these new characters. In the end they encounter their first undead person, they run him over twice and watch as he still tries to get up. Madison and Travis look at each other with incredulity but not nearly enough terror. If FTWD is going to match the scares of TWD they are going to have to get the characters on-screen a lot more amped up over the insanity happening. We Angelinos are tough, but we’re not numb to blood-covered dead people trying to eat us.

The look and feel of the show are there, casting orange-ish L.A. hues in abundance in contrast to TWD’s green ones, and the music maintains decent tension, even if I was rather craving Bear McCreary’s frenzied strings (no complaints about Atticus Ross’s opening theme). Because of the newness of the disease-spreading, there will be a lot more opportunity for blood and gore on the show, rather than the decayed look of TWD. Madison Clark isn’t nearly as compelling as Rick Grimes was in his pilot episode, but Nick Clark is and so far is the only one displaying a little gravitas toward the situation. But considering that the similarly short season one of TWD played out in a slow Georgian sizzle, I’m trained well enough in Kirkman’s world-building to know its worth sticking around to see what’s coming.

Rating: 7/10

An actor earns serious credit when they not only perform incredibly in a role but perform it in a way that makes audiences believe no one else could have possibly played it better. Not to overly gush about a film others have already gushed enough over, but I was oozing with said respect when exiting Grandma. Not only is it a well-written film with a rare and fiercely defined main character, but its title role fits its perfectly casted actor, Lily Tomlin, in perfect symbiosis. Playing this role at this point in her career is perfect timing, and Paul Weitz casting and utilizing her unique talents is an example of the art of directing at its finest. Though comedy might be the safest genre for allowing septuagenarians to shine (though Grandma is more a part of that ambiguous sub-genre of dramedy), it’s films like this that prove there is a trove of older actors who, in addition to the talent they already bring, provide another level of performance that, when given the chance, can absolutely blow us away.

This secret reserve of talent—likely derived straight from life experience—is something Tomlin displays in abundance in Grandma. A taciturn and grieving widow, Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a feminist poet and movement leader, still revered if not much remembered from her glory days. A year and a half has passed since her partner Violet has died from cancer, and her relationship with a much younger woman, Olivia (Judy Greer), is ending and she deals with it with the same cutting rigidity with which she faces all of life’s challenges, telling Olivia she doesn’t love her, and to leave her key on the table. Elle hardly has time to actually process this breakup when her teenaged granddaughter Sage (the curly-haired goddess Julia Garner) shows up on her front door, pregnant and in need of funds for an abortion.

Elle does her due diligence as a grandma—complaining about the price of an abortion these days—and also as a wizened woman, asking Sage if she’s thought through the decision since she’s likely to think of it at some point every day for the rest of her life, but never tries to talk her out of it. Instead, she grabs the keys to her vintage Dodge and agrees to help Sage scare up the $600 she needs by 5:30 that afternoon. As Elle attempts to collect on old debts and the goodwill of friends, more of her varied and complicated life is revealed. Laverne Cox is a tattoo artist buddy who tells of Elle’s kindhearted gift of loaning her money to fix a botched transgender boob-job. Elizabeth Pena is coffee shop owner who puts Elle in her place by offering $50 for some of her old first edition hardbacks, including The Feminine Mystique (and Sage wonders aloud if the book has anything to do with The X-Men). Elle challenges Sage’s sensibilities, teaching her along the way by standing up to her deadbeat boyfriend when Sage won’t (hilariously kicking the teenager’s ass) and making a scene in a coffee shop when the proprietor asks her to quiet down when discussing abortion.

While clearly pro-choice, the film doesn’t especially try to conventionalize or even trivialize abortion but instead bring it into colloquial terms. Sage’s decision is treated with gravity and respect. It’s even given an interesting dual-perspective by another character in the film, who expresses the sadness an abortion once brought them with sincerity and dignity. The crux of the film lies within a scene between Elle and her one-time husband Karl (Sam Elliott, also absolutely shining), he an unfortunate casualty of Elle being gay at a time when no one was discussing such things and thus part of her path of destruction in her youth.  They chit-chat about lovers and grandchildren, roll a doobie together, and then go on to have a fiercely charged and emotionally revealing series of exchanges that perfectly expresses the complexity of real relationships, the many forms of love, and the way our decisions shape us and stay with us as we mature.

Paul Weitz is a wonder in being able to capture saturated morsels of the different humor associated with different age ranges and genders. In American Pie he nailed the adolescent male mind without demeaning it, and here he’s traveled the length of the spectrum (galaxy?) to home in on the perfectly evolved humor of an aging widowed lesbian academic. I’ve certainly never heard anyone insult another by calling them a “writer-in -residence” but the joke is among the sharpest of the film. All involved should certainly remain in the minds of voters when awards season rolls around.

Filled with laughs, realistic love, and a freedom to emote, Grandma is as cathartic as it is hilarious. Even while seeing the pain that comes from a lifetime filled with loss and experience, the wisdom and humor of a lifetime’s experience is given equal merit. It’s enough to make being a grandma look like the coolest job out there, and a reason to look forward to advancing through our years.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage.

Style will carry a film fairly far. It is, after all, a visual medium. In a genre film it’s especially useful in elevating the expected into more artistic territory. With a photographer-turned-director like first-timer Tyler Shields, style appears to be the home base and comfort zone from which his expression springs. Which makes for a unique looking film debut, but also drives home a very basic film lesson: style is swell, but story is everything. Final Girl (not to be at all confused with The Final Girls, a slasher film spoof slated for October) is Shields’ first film and while every frame exudes the talent of a man who understands lighting, costuming, coloring, and staging, he has managed to make a film that would have made an amazing photography show but is ultimately a frustratingly scarce horror film. The tale of a gorgeous young assassin facing off against four sadistic teenage boys to the death is an intriguing premise for a thriller, and yet Shields proves that premise and style can only take a film so far.

Set in some ambiguous time period where teenage boys own tuxedos and wear them to the local diner, and assassins in training wear cocktail dresses and heels, Final Girl doesn’t offer much in the way of backstory. Character motivation, it’s implied, is up to the viewers interpretation. So when the film opens with Wes Bentley interviewing a young girl and he succinctly mentions the death of his wife and child, that is apparently all the understanding we’re meant to have of why he’s chosen this newly orphaned girl, or who they are meant to work for, or how it is they choose “bad guys” to go after. It’s not much, not much at all. And in the following scenes where Veronica, played by a very blonde Abigail Breslin, goes through a series of training sessions with Wes Bentley’s William she doesn’t think to ask him all the questions that any normal viewer would have only ten minutes into the film.

While always inexplicably training in her fancy dresses and heels, Veronica is led through a series of very specific trainings: she has to exert enough energy in a choke hold to cause her mentor to pass out, she needs to rely less on her gun and more on her physical prowess, and she’s injected with an LSD-like cocktail so that she can simultaneously experience her worst fear (a fear that is sadly irrational for someone supposedly so badass) and experience what her enemy would be going through should she be able to drug him before facing off. It’s all very specific and very leading. Could it be she’ll need to do all these same things in the near future?

In an early scene we meet the four teenage boys who will soon be Veronica’s prey, led by The Hunger Games’s Alexander Ludwig. With nary an introduction its established quickly that these well-tailored gents have a bad habit of picking up pretty blondes, taking them to their hangout in the woods, and engaging in a game of cat and mouse with them before serially killing them. Why has William picked up on these boys’ hobby when local police haven’t seemed to do so? Especially with a noticeably high count of missing females in the area and a presumably easy trace back to the young men? No idea. But when Veronica shows up at the diner, blonde and appealing, the boys take the bait without question. Thus the tables turn and though she feigns fear at the beginning, Veronica uses her (very specific) skills to give the boys the revenge they deserve.

The rest of the film is split into four fight scenes between Veronica and each of the boys. Based on the limited screen time each guy has had, we know approximately one thing about each of them. Perhaps the writer, Adam Prince, thought it would be clever to define each of these young men by one particular trait, either playing with a weakness they have, or a sadistic trait they possess, but because it’s all laid out so clearly in the one shot each boy is given on their own, when those same traits are used against them by Veronica it’s hard to see much cleverness in it. Presumably, we can only work with what we’re given.

Each frame shrouded in a perfect vignette, a pool of light, and the brightest of colors popping amidst the darker backdrops, one gets the sensation after a while that they’ve seen this film before, but as a spread in Vogue. There’s no denying Shields’ photography talent, but if the point in photography is that the visual story told is succinct and intriguing, this method does not translate to a 90-minute film. Stills from the film will undoubtedly lure in viewers, but turn those perfectly staged frames into action and the energy is lost.

The dialog is pithy and unnatural, attempting to keep up that ambiguously old-timey vibe. The ending is expected but no point in searching for character arcs or discovering anything new about any of the characters that wasn’t fed to us within the film’s first 20 minutes. It’s hard to watch a talented cast look so beautiful and perform absolutely nothing of substance.

The cinematography and set design and lighting aside—since they were all performed by someone other than Shields—we can only hope that before his next foray into filmmaking Shields picks up a few tips on the basics: story and directing actors. Even in a genre as forgiving as thrillers where a little action can make up for a lot, there are necessary building blocks. Final Girl is the best-dressed girl at the party with absolutely nothing of interest to say.

It’s August and things get pretty hit or miss at the theaters, right when things are so miserably hot that we’re looking for movie distractions wherever we can. We’ve already established you can skip the latest superhero movie and unless you live in a town with some of the more interesting indie fare, you may just save yourself a few bucks, put that moolah toward blasting the AC and snuggling down for some solid home-entertaining. If you can’t make it out to see Kristen Wiig in theaters this weekend, you can watch her at home. And with VOD, you can see the new Charlize Theron-starring, Gillian Flynn-written thriller, as well as a new political drama with Nicolas Cage. Kick back, cool off and watch away. We’ve got all your new home streaming recommendations ahead.

Netflix

Welcome to Me (Shira Piven, 2014)

Kristen Wiig fans can go see her in theaters today in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, but if that Sundance favorite film isn’t playing in your town, you’re not out of luck. Wiig also stars in Welcome to Me, an indie film by relative newbie Shira Piven (brother is actor Jeremy Piven). Wiig stars as Alice Klieg, a socially awkward and borderline personality disorder patient who wins the lottery and decides she wants her own TV show and now has the money to buy herself one. Wes Bentley and James Marsden play two brothers running an infomercial TV studio strapped for cash who take advantage of Alice’s newfound fortune and iffy mentally ill decision-making. The film walks a fine line in finding the humor in mental illness, but mostly exceeds at finding the humor in self-therapy and in the entirely human desire to be understood. It’s a funny and colorful film and the perfect platform for Wiig to showcase the many sides of her humorous abilities.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
HitRECord on TV (Season 1)
Doctor Who(Season 8) on 8/8/15
Club de Cuervos (Season 1)
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (Kiah Roache-Turner, 2015)
Kill Me Three Times (Kriv Stenders, 2014)
The Look of Love (Michael Winterbottom, 2013)

Fandor

The Sun’s Burial (Nagisa Ôshima, 1960)

The early ’60s were an intriguing time in Japanese cinema at a central peak of the Japanese New Wave movement, not especially unlike the French New Wave movement but distinct in its influencing factors, among which was a desire to spark some fresh perspective into the dying Japanese film industry. Among the most prominent young filmmakers to emerge was Nagisa Ôshima. A few of his later titles may be what we most recall him for including Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and the samurai film Taboo, but his second film Cruel Story of Youth launched him into the New Wave spotlight earning him a place alongside Truffaut and Godard. The Sun’s Burial is his follow-up to Cruel Story of Youth, released only months later—he released three films in total in 1960—and contains much of the same themes including youth living in the midst of socioeconomic disparity. Following a group of young gangsters committing crimes and dealing with drama on the streets of Osaka, its the perfect way to see a master in the making, finding those moments within the film that showcase Ôshima’s brilliance.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
The Man in the Iron Mask (James Whale, 1939)
Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989)
Charles Manson Superstar (Nikolas Schreck, 1989)
Girl on a Bicycle (Jeremy Leven, 2013)

MUBI

Actress (Robert Greene, 2014)

When we caught the film at Hot Docs last year our critic’s consensus was that Actress is “mesmerizing the whole way through” and one of the better documentary films we saw last year. Robert Greene blurs the lines of documentary filmmaking by focusing on Brandy Burre, an actress and mother most publicly known from her role on the HBO series The Wire. In the film, Greene is given access into Burre’s home life as a mother and her latest endeavors to get back into acting. A simple enough focus, but what makes it interesting is the way in which Burre’s behavior calls into question how much of what we see is her acting and what is her being herself. Or an even bigger question is if she is being herself, but influenced by the direction of Greene. When on camera, how much is anyone really themselves? Intriguing ponderings and an excellently made film.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
I Saw The Devil (Kim Jee-Woon, 2010)
What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
Cure – The Life of Another (Andrea Staka, 2014)
Kati With an I (Robert Greene, 2010)
Laila (George Schnéevoigt, 1929)

Video On-Demand

Dark Places (Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2015)

Gone Girl being the discussion film of 2014, it will be interesting to see if as many people pick up on the next Gillian Flynn novel adaptation, with another script by Flynn herself. Similarly twisty, Dark Places stars Charlize Theron as Libby, the sole survivor of the brutal murder of her family when she was a child. Years later public interest in her family’s murder case cause Libby to revisit the crime, unearthing new information and throwing Libby for a loop. The film also stars Drea de Matteo, Corey Stoll, Christina Hendricks, and Nicholas Hoult but let’s be honest, Charlize Theron is basically our favorite actress right now due to Mad Max: Fury Road. We’ll be rushing out to see her next 10 films for sure.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Five Star (Keith Miller, 2014)
The Runner (Austin Stark, 2015)
Harbinger Down (Alec Gillis, 2015)
Spare Change (Arturo Guzman, Jonathan Talbert, 2015)

It’s quite possibly the most iconic film series of all time, and as we all anxiously await the continuation of that epic galactic saga this December we can’t help but look at the shelves of Star Wars laserdiscs, VHS tapes, original version DVDs and Lucas-ized version of DVDs, the special editions, the Funko toys and the action heroes and think: It’s just not enough.

I mean look at this stuff. Isn’t it neat? But wouldn’t you say your collection’s incomplete?

Now The Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm Ltd., and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have announced they are releasing commemorative Blu-ray steelbooks of the “original”—a debatable term—six films on November 10th. They are of course limited time only. Each steelbook (is this a term we’re using now?) is ordained with character covers including rather CG looking versions of Yoda, Darth Maul, General Grievous (which no one was likely asking for, but OK), and more.

In addition to the collectible steelbook packaging, each single-disc Blu-ray includes existing audio commentary with George Lucas and the film crew as well as audio commentary from archival interviews with the cast and crew.

On October 13, you can geek out even harder with Star Wars: The Complete Saga, which includes all six feature films on Blu-ray, along with three additional discs containing more than 40 hours of previously released extensive special features.

Now we just need one of you to watch every single format and version of the series, do a screen shot-by-shot analysis and put it into a tidy excel sheet on the Internet ranking them definitively. Yeah, we definitely NEED that. Get on it people. And check out the Steelbook Blu-ray packaging below.

Star Wars Steelbook Blu-rays

As the LGBT rights movement continues to make huge strides in America, it feels like a fitting time to start to look back at the many battles fought by this ostracized and abused group of people. One such historical turning point is the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City, the violence and passion of which inspired the greater LGBT community to rally and get organized in their efforts for equality and safety.

Now we have a stirring first trailer for Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall, a film following a fictional young gay man, played by Jeremy Irvine, forced to flee his home when his sexual orientation proves too much for his friends and family, who ends up on the streets of Greenwich Village, NYC. He befriends a group of people made up of young gays, lesbians, and drag queens who introduce him to the Stonewall Inn, a gay-friendly mafia-run club and safe-haven. But eventually even their safe space starts to be regularly raided by the NYPD, who harass the people there. The historical consequence to this constant persecution was an eruption of rage in the form of two days of riots and a kick-off of the modern LGBT movement.

Though not the first film version of this important historical event, it certainly feels like the man who gave us Independence Day, Stargate, and The Patriot is a seasoned pro at igniting pride, and this two-minute trailer is plenty inspiring. The film also stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Joey King, and Ron Perlman and will be released in theaters September 25.

It’s interesting that teenagers and post-apocalyptic worlds fit so well together. Even Mad Max: Fury Road had a youngish cast. Perhaps there really is no country for old men. The Last Survivors (formerly titled The Well) is a post-apocalyptic film that tells a simple story convincingly, especially considering its director, Thomas S. Hammock, has up until now focused his career on production design. Taking place in a future world of water-depleted desperation, the film keeps its focus narrow, depicting life in the now desert wasteland of the Oregon Valley without trying to explain the world or how any of this came to pass. It’s a very present film, focusing on the immediate struggles of its quiet characters.

Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) is a smart and self-sufficient survivor during these dangerous times. Living at what used to be a home for orphaned youth with another survivor, Dean (Twilight‘s Booboo Stewart), she discretely keeps the two of them alive off of water from their hidden well. During the day Kendal slinks around the sun-streaked arid land in search of abandoned cars, rummaging through their parts for a specific piece that will work on the non-functioning airplane they hope to use to escape this place. Dean, who is starting to look sickly, spends nights listening to the old two-way radio the neighboring farms use to keep each other informed. One night a neighbor says there are people outside her house, and her fright suggests there is more to fear in the desert than dehydration. Kendal grabs her trusty shotgun and heads off into the night. A man named Carson (John Gries) has been offering his help to those left in the valley who want to come out of hiding, but as she sneaks around the dark farm, Kendal sees that Carson, along with his daughter and the sadistic priestly looking lackey who never leave his side, clearly have selfish intentions for the land (and water) of the farmers. Kendal barely escapes with her life, the other farm folk not so lucky.

Setting a jumpy atmosphere as it transitions between dark indoor and night scenes and blindingly bright outdoor desert scenes, the film keeps up great tension. Hammock is smart to keep his plot simple, focusing on survival and the simple daily threats that Kendal must face. Richardson carries the film expertly, showing both courage and fear to round Kendal out as a believable and likable hero. The film does falter somewhat in providing proper motivation for its side characters. Kendal and Dean, forced to maintain their daily survival in hiding mode as they work toward their goal of flying away, do their small part to help others as available. A child, Alby (Max Charles), presumably also from the home, lives in a neighboring barn, refusing to join Kendal and Dean but accepting the daily rations she brings him.

Gabriel (another Twilight alum, Michael Welch), part of a neighboring farm, harbors feelings for Kendal yet inexplicably accepts his place in Carson’s army of burlap clad drones after his family ill-advisedly seeks Carson’s help. Which is another small hiccup—Kendal does a lot of hiding throughout the film doing a good job of staying alive, but isn’t especially helpful in keeping those around her alive, especially in warning others of Carson’s obvious maliciousness. It takes a lot for her to finally fight back in the end, though when she does it’s a well-crafted standoff. Most puzzling, though, is that Carson himself seems to lack compelling causation. Granted, his greed for water, the highest commodity, is evident, but his sadistic nature isn’t as clearly explained. Everything he does, he claims to do for his daughter, but the chemistry between them is weak.

While it’s easy to get caught up in the details (for one, Kendal’s hair is entirely too perfect considering showers are definitely not an option in a world without water), the overall picture Hammond paints is pretty remarkable for a first-time director. With the feel of a well-paced Western, The Last Survivors stands out, never sinking to the theatrics of other post-apocalyptic films.

A version of this review ran as part of our 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival coverage. The Last Survivors is available August 4, 2015 on VOD, DVD & Blu-Ray. 

It sounds like an out there sitcom pitch: Two former friends with old grudges forced to live next door to one another on a country estate because the zombie apocalypse has left them as possibly the only survivors and the world has become an icy wasteland. Oh, the antics that could ensue! Arguing over property lines. Squabbles over one neighbor’s late night penchant for loud music, and even irritations about the blasted neighborhood dog. On paper, Miguel Ángel Vivas’s Extinction technically fits this silly description, but considering the very serious tone of the film, he clearly decided not to veer toward a laugh track and instead play this one straight. Except it’s just a little too hard to swallow, and in the sludge of its seriousness, Extinction is sorely lacking in any relief of tension.

Starring a ruggedly long-haired Matthew Fox as Patrick, and a deliberately contrasted and clean-cut Jeffrey Donovan as Jack, the film opens at the start of a zombie-style epidemic. Short-haired Patrick, Jack, and their shared love interest, Emma, are on a bus headed to some sort of military safe zone. Emma has a small baby in her arms, and when the bus is suddenly stopped due to troubles outside, she does her best to keep the child calm. Vivas doesn’t delve too deeply into the origins of the infected, but it becomes apparent that once bitten these people turn quickly and are fiercely aggressive. When the obtuse military men exit the bus to scope out the situation they quickly fall victim and the entire bus goes into a panic. Patrick, Jack and Emma escape but not without injury. Emma is bitten and Patrick has to chop off her arm to save her.

Flash forward to the present where Patrick has adopted his long-haired look and snowmobiles around New York City hunting food. Back at the country homestead in the kitschily titled town of Harmony, Patrick lives next door to Jack and Lu (Quinn McColgan), the now 9-year old child Emma once protected. With no sign of Emma, it’s not hard to guess the source of the animosity that separates Jack and Patrick. They live in their houses, several layers of chain-link fence dividing them. Patrick likes to get drunk with his dog and nightly broadcasts through the radio searching for any other survivors. Jack maintains a strict household with Lu, playing the dutiful father determined to give his daughter as close to a normal human upbringing as possible. Her television time is limited—she watches old cartoons powered by their gas generator—and her studies encouraged, but she’s of a curious age and her questions about the world get increasingly more complicated. Especially as they relate to her curiosity in Patrick and her love of his dog.

But Extinction can’t seem to decide where it would like the meat of its content to lie, so almost as soon as the relational dynamics get interesting, the focus pivots and turns to the outside world where the infected humans have apparently not all died off due to the cold, but instead adapted. Forget that science tells us true evolutionary adaptation takes hundreds of thousands of years, in this version of the world it takes about 10 years. Which Patrick discovers when out hunting one day. He encounters an all white, blind, and sharp-toothed version of the zombies he encountered years before. Somehow the creatures have evolved to live in the intense cold and for whatever reason decided they didn’t need sight but use sound to hunt instead. Oh, and they have nasty little mouths that have developed on the sides of their heads with extra teeth and the ability to communicate.

Of course, these monsters are terrifying to behold, but Vivas makes a distinct beeline toward creature-feature by deciding not to take advantage of the inherent horror in the human-ness of zombies (though he is working with the content from Juan de Dios Garduño’s novel Y pese a todo…, which likely elaborates on the creatures origins more). The film then goes on to parry back and forth awkwardly between this new and violent threat and Lu’s innocent and child-like efforts to reunite Jack and Patrick as friends. The introduction of a new survivor provides a new hope for the larger picture of humanity, but Jack and Patrick have hardly a moment to argue over the sanity of staying put versus finding others when they are attacked by a slew of creatures. All of which leads to a predictable ending and a sincere lack of emotional reconciliation.

Fox and Donovan are both accomplished actors and play their part with as much sincerity as they can muster, but Vivas uses McColgan and her bright little smile to provide the only bit of warmth to this cold film. I’m open to childlike manipulation as much as the next person, and her sway on the characters is endearing, but she becomes a pawn in the film’s tawdry plot development. The most obvious sign of Vivas’s attempts to add gravitas to a predictable thriller is in the almost comically over-animated CG sunsets glittering off the white snow-covered hillsides of the film’s setting. The sun appears to be ten times its normal size—which, if true, would scientifically mean this world would be warmer not colder—and reminded me, maybe because of the farm setting, of The Wizard of Oz. But for all its attempts to take us through the necessity of human connection, the bonds formed in the film feel as fleeting and forced as the character’s delusions of safety.

Heavy-handed in both its horror elements and its emotions, Extinction ends up lacking in both real frights and real attachments.

A vastly opposing turn from last year’s mostly light and decidedly oddball Frank, Lenny Abrahamson’s next film—which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Program—looks to be a heartstring tightener. Room stars Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son trapped within the confines of a 10ft x 10 ft one-room shed. Based on the book by Emma Donoghue, Larson plays Ma, a young woman determined not to let the smallness of the universe she and her son Jack (Tremblay) occupy limit his growth and world experience.

As evidenced by the teaser, Ma and Jack make a daring escape and young Jack faces the shocking reality that there is a world beyond the four walls he’s only ever known. Also starring William H. Macy and Joan Allen the film looks like it should elicit some serious emotion.

The film releases limitedly on October 16th and nationwide November 6th.

The first round of titles for the 40th Toronto International Film Festival were announced this morning by Piers Handling, CEO and Director of TIFF and artistic director Cameron Bailey. 15 Galas and 34 Special Presentations were announced and, as usual, represent a diverse range of directors and countries.

Among the standouts are the opening night film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition, a film about a man struggling with his wife’s tragic death through an unlikely communication with the customer service department of a vending machine company. Other titles to get excited for: Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated The Martian, a new comedy from Julie Delpy, Peter Sollett’s Freeheld, and Cary Fukunaga’s much buzzed about Beasts of No Nation, and a new documentary from Michael Moore. Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne is sure to garner great interest as well.

Previous festival favorites, such as Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth and John Crowley’s Brooklyn, will also make their North American and Canadian premieres, as well as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster and Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria.

One thing’s for sure, TIFF continues to lead the Fall festival pack, and although Telluride’s lineup won’t be revealed until Labor Day weekend, TIFF continues to be the launching platform for awards season, and this year looks as promising as any.

The 40th Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 to 20, 2015.

GALAS

Beeba Boys
Deepa Mehta, Canada, World Premiere
An adrenaline-charged violent Indo-Canadian gang war mixes guns, bhangra beats, bespoke suits, cocaine, and betrayal. Gang boss Jeet Johar and his loyal, young crew are audaciously taking over the Vancouver drug and arms scene from an old-style crime syndicate. Hearts are broken and family bonds shattered when the Beeba Boys (known as the “nice boys”) do anything “to be seen and to be feared” — in a white world.

Demolition
Jean-Marc Vallée, USA, World Premiere (Opening Night Film)
In Demolition, a successful investment banker, Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal), struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. Despite pressure from his father-in-law (Chris Cooper) to pull it together, Davis continues to unravel. What starts as a complaint letter to a vending machine company turns into a series of letters revealing startling personal admissions. Davis’ letters catch the attention of customer service rep Karen (Naomi Watts) and, amidst emotional and financial burdens of her own, the two strangers form an unlikely connection. With the help of Karen and her son (Judah Lewis), Davis starts to rebuild, beginning with the demolition of the life he once knew.

The Dressmaker
Jocelyn Moorhouse, Australia, World Premiere
Based on the best-selling novel by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker is a bittersweet, comedy-drama set in early 1950s Australia. After many years working as a dressmaker in exclusive Parisian fashion houses, Tilly Dunnage, a beautiful and talented misfit, returns home to the tiny middle-of-nowhere town of Dungatar to right the wrongs of the past. Not only does she reconcile with her ailing, eccentric mother Molly, and unexpectedly falls in love with the pure-hearted Teddy, but armed with her sewing machine and incredible sense of style, Tilly sets out to right the wrongs of the past and transforms the women of the town but encounters unexpected romance along the way. Starring Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving.

Eye in the Sky
Gavin Hood, United Kingdom, World Premiere
London-based military intelligence officer Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is remotely commanding a top secret drone operation to capture a group of dangerous terrorists at their safe-house in Nairobi, Kenya. The mission suddenly escalates from a capture to a kill operation, when Powell realizes that the terrorists are about to embark on a deadly suicide mission. American drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is poised to destroy the safe-house when a nine-year-old-girl enters the kill zone just outside the walls of the house. With unforeseen collateral damage now entering the equation, the impossible decision of when to strike gets passed up the kill chain of politicians and lawyers as the seconds tick down. Also stars Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi and Iain Glen.

Forsaken
Jon Cassar, Canada, World Premiere
Tormented by a dark secret, an aging gunfighter abandons a life of killing and returns home, only to discover his mother has died. He’s forced to confront his estranged father and the life he left behind. Starring Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Demi Moore.

Freeheld
Peter Sollett, USA, World Premiere
Based on the Oscar-winning documentary and adapted by the writer of Philadelphia, Freeheld is the true love story of Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree and their fight for justice. A decorated New Jersey police detective, Laurel is diagnosed with cancer and wants to leave her hard-earned pension to her domestic partner, Stacie. However the county officials — the Freeholders — conspire to prevent Laurel from doing so. Hard-nosed detective Dane Wells and activist Steven Goldstein come together in Laurel and Stacie’s defense, rallying police officers and ordinary citizens to support their struggle for equality. Starring Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Michael Shannon and Steve Carell.

Hyena Road (Hyena Road: Le Chemin du Combat)
Paul Gross, Canada, World Premiere
A sniper who has never allowed himself to think of his targets as humans becomes implicated in the life of one such target. An intelligence officer who has never contemplated killing becomes the engine of a plot to kill. And a legendary Mujahideen warrior who had put war behind him is now the centre of the battle zone. Three men, three worlds, three conflicts — all stand at the intersection of modern warfare, a murky world of fluid morality in which all is not as it seems.

LEGEND
Brian Helgeland, United Kingdom, International Premiere
The true story of the rise and fall of London’s most notorious gangsters, brothers Reggie and Ron Kray, both portrayed by Tom Hardy in an amazing double performance. LEGEND is a classic crime thriller that takes audiences into the secret history of the 1960s and the extraordinary events that secured the infamy of the Kray twins.

Lolo
Julie Delpy, France, North American Premiere
While on holiday in the south of France, Parisian sophisticate Violette falls in love with carefree geek Jean-René. As their relationship blossoms, Jean-René heads to Paris to spend more time with Violette but finds himself up against her possessive teenage son Lolo who is determined to sabotage their relationship by any means necessary. A razor-sharp comedy from Julie Delpy.

The Man Who Knew Infinity
Matthew Brown, United Kingdom, World Premiere
A true story of friendship that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematics genius from India, travelled to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he forged a bond with his mentor, the eccentric professor GH Hardy, and fought to show the world the magic of his mind. Starring Dev Patel and Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons.

The Martian
Ridley Scott, USA, World Premiere
During a manned mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. Based on a best-selling novel, and helmed by master director Ridley Scott, The Martian features a star-studded cast that includes Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Donald
Glover.

The Program
Stephen Frears, United Kingdom, World Premiere
From Academy Award-nominated director Stephen Frears (The Queen, Philomena) and producers Working Title (The Theory of Everything), comes the true story of the meteoric rise and fall of one of the most celebrated and controversial men in recent history, Lance Armstrong. Starring Ben Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd and Guillaume Canet.

Remember
Atom Egoyan, Canada, North American Premiere
Remember is the contemporary story of Zev, who discovers that the Nazi guard who murdered his family some 70 years ago is living in America under an assumed identity. Despite the obvious challenges, Zev sets out on a mission to deliver long-delayed justice with his own trembling hand. What follows is a remarkable cross-continent road-trip with surprising consequences. Starring Academy Award winners Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau.

Septembers of Shiraz
Wayne Blair, USA, World Premiere
A thriller based on the New York Times bestseller, this is the true story of a secular Jewish family caught in the 1979 Iranian revolution and their heroic journey to overcome and ultimately escape from the deadly tyranny that swept their country and threatened to extinguish their lives at every turn. Starring Salma Hayek and Adrien Brody.

Stonewall
Roland Emmerich, USA, World Premiere
This fictional drama inspired by true events follows a young man caught up during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine) finds himself alone in Greenwich Village, homeless and destitute, until he befriends a group of street kids who introduce him to the local watering hole, The Stonewall Inn — however, this shady, mafia-run club is far from a safe haven. As Danny and his friends experience discrimination, endure atrocities and are repeatedly harassed by the police, the entire community of young gays, lesbians and drag queens who populate Stonewall erupts in a storm of anger. With the toss of a single brick, a riot ensues and a crusade for equality is born. Starring Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ron Perlman and Joey King.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, USA, Canadian Premiere
A man struggles with his inability to connect with other people. Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan and David Thewlis.

Beasts of No Nation
Cary Fukunaga, USA/Ghana, Canadian Premiere
Based on the highly acclaimed novel, director Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation brings to life the gripping tale of Agu (newcomer Abraham Attah), a child soldier torn from his family to fight in the civil war of an African country. Idris Elba dominates the screen in the role of Commandant, a warlord who takes in Agu and instructs him in the ways of war.

Black Mass
Scott Cooper, USA, Canadian Premiere
In 1970s South Boston, FBI Agent John Connolly persuades Irish-American gangster Jimmy Bulger to act as an informant for the FBI in order to eliminate their common enemy: the Italian mob. The drama tells the story of this unholy alliance, which spiraled out of control, allowing Whitey to evade law enforcement while becoming one of the most ruthless and dangerous gangsters in Boston history. Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Kevin Bacon, Dakota Johnson, Julianne Nicholson, Corey Stoll and Peter Sarsgaard.

Brooklyn
John Crowley, United Kingdom/Ireland/Canada, Canadian Premiere
Set on opposite sides of the Atlantic, this drama tells the profoundly moving story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of America, Eilis departs Ireland and the comfort of her mother’s home for the shores of New York City. The initial shackles of homesickness quickly diminish as a fresh romance sweeps Eilis into the intoxicating charm of love. But soon, her new vivacity is disrupted by her past, and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters.

The Club
Pablo Larraín, Chile, North American Premiere
Four men live in a secluded house in a seaside town. Sent to purge sins of the past, they live under a strict regime and the watchful eye of a caretaker. Their fragile stability is disrupted by the arrival of a fifth man who brings with him their darkest secrets.

Colonia
Florian Gallenberger, Germany/Luxembourg/France, World Premiere
Colonia tells the story of Lena and Daniel, a young couple who become entangled in the Chilean military coup of 1973. Daniel is abducted by Pinochet’s secret police and Lena tracks him to a sealed off area in the south of the country called Colonia Dignidad. The Colonia presents itself as a charitable mission run by lay preacher Paul Schäfer but, in fact, is a place nobody ever escapes from. Lena decides to join the cult in order to find Daniel. Starring Emma Watson, Daniel Brühl and Michael Nyqvist.

The Danish Girl
Tom Hooper, United Kingdom, North American Premiere
The Danish Girl is the remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener (portrayed by Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander), directed by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Misérables). Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

The Daughter
Simon Stone, Australia, North American Premiere
A man returns to his hometown and unearths a long-buried family secret. As he tries to right the wrongs of the past, his actions threaten to shatter the lives of those he left behind years before. Starring Geoffrey Rush, Paul Schneider, Miranda Otto and Sam Neill.

Desierto
Jonás Cuarón, Mexico, World Premiere
Moises is traveling by foot with a group of undocumented workers across a desolate strip of the border between Mexico and the United States, seeking a new life in the north. They are discovered by a lone American vigilante, Sam, and a frantic chase begins. Set against the stunningly brutal landscape, Moises and Sam engage in a lethal match of wits, each desperate to survive and escape the desert that threatens to consume them. Starring Gael García Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Dheepan
Jacques Audiard, France, North American Premiere
To escape the civil war in Sri Lanka, a former Tamil Tiger soldier, a young woman and a little girl pose as a family. These strangers try to build a life together in a Parisian suburb.

Families (Belles Familles)
Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France, World Premiere
When Shanghai-based businessman Jérome Varenne learns that his childhood home in the village of Ambray is at the centre of a local conflict, he heads there to straighten things out and finds himself at the centre of familial and romantic complications. Starring Mathieu Amalric.

The Family Fang
Jason Bateman, USA, World Premiere
Annie and Baxter Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents. But when both siblings find themselves stalled in life, they return home for the first time in a decade where they become entangled in a dark mystery surrounding their parents’ disappearance. Jason Bateman directs and stars, along with co-stars Nicole Kidman and
Christopher Walken, in this film based on the New York Times bestseller.

Guilty (Talvar)
Meghna Gulzar, India, World Premiere
Based on true events that set off a media frenzy all over the world, Guilty follows the 2008 Noida Double Murder Case of an investigation into the deaths of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old Hemraj Banjade, a domestic employed by Aarushi’s family, in Noida, India. The controversial case lives on in the mind of the public, despite a guilty verdict that sentenced the parents of
the murdered girl to life in prison. Starring Irrfan Khan.

I Smile Back
Adam Salky, USA, Canadian Premiere
Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Amy Koppelman, I Smile Back explores the life of Laney (Sarah Silverman), a devoted wife and mother who seems to have it all — a perfect husband, pristine house and shiny SUV. However, beneath the façade lies depression and disillusionment that catapult her into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its effect on those she loves.

The Idol (Ya Tayr El Tayer)
Hany Abu-Assad, United Kingdom/Palestine/Qatar, World Premiere
A young boy in Gaza, Mohammad Assaf, dreams of one day singing in the Cairo Opera House with his sister and best friend, Nour. One day, Nour collapses and is rushed to the hospital where it is discovered that she needs a kidney transplant. Nour leaves Mohammad with a dying wish that someday, he will become a famous singer in Cairo. Escaping from Gaza to Egypt against
unbelievable odds, Mohammad makes the journey of a lifetime. From two-time Academy Award nominee Hany Abu-Assad comes this inspirational drama inspired by the incredibly true story of Mohammed Assaf, winner of Arab Idol 2013.

The Lady in the Van
Nicholas Hytner, USA/United Kingdom, World Premiere
Based on the true story of Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who “temporarily” parked her van in writer Alan Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. What begins as a begrudged favour becomes a relationship that will change both their lives. Filmed on the street and in the house where Bennett and Miss Shepherd lived all those years, acclaimed director Nicholas Hytner reunites with iconic writer Alan Bennett (The Madness of King George, The History Boys) to bring this rare and touching portrait to the screen. Starring Maggie Smith, Dominic Cooper and James Corden.

Len and Company
Tim Godsall, USA, North American Premiere
A successful music producer (Rhys Ifans) quits the industry and exiles himself in upstate New York, but the solitude he seeks is shattered when both his estranged son (Jack Kilmer) and the pop-star (Juno Temple) he’s created come looking for answers.

The Lobster
Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/United Kingdom/Greece/France/Netherlands, North American Premiere
In a dystopian near future, single people are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days or are transformed into animals and released into the woods. Starring Colin Farrell, Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux and Ben Whishaw.

Louder than Bombs
Joachim Trier, Norway/France/Denmark, North American Premiere
An upcoming exhibition celebrating photographer Isabelle Reed three years after her untimely death brings her eldest son Jonah back to the family house, forcing him to spend more time with his father Gene and withdrawn younger brother Conrad than he has in years. With the three men under the same roof, Gene tries desperately to connect with his two sons, but they struggle to reconcile their feelings about the woman they remember so differently. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and Jesse Eisenberg.

Maggie’s Plan
Rebecca Miller, USA, World Premiere
Maggie’s plan to have a baby on her own is derailed when she falls in love with John, a married man, destroying his volatile marriage to the brilliant Georgette. But one daughter and three years later, Maggie is out of love and in a quandary: what do you do when you suspect your man and his ex-wife are actually perfect for each other? Starring Julianne Moore, Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph.

Mountains May Depart (Shan He Gu Ren)
Jia Zhang-ke, China/France/Japan, North American Premiere
The new film from master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (A Touch of Sin) jumps from the recent past to the speculative near-future as it examines how China’s economic boom has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

Office
Johnnie To, China/Hong Kong, International Premiere
Billion-dollar company Jones & Sunn is going public. Chairman Ho Chung-ping has promised CEO Chang, who has been his mistress for more than 20 years, to become a major shareholder of the company. As the IPO team enters the company to audit its accounts, a series of inside stories start to be revealed. Starring Chow Yun Fat, Sylvia Chang, Tang Wei and Wang Ziyi.

Parched
Leena Yadav, India/USA, World Premiere
Three ordinary women dare to break free from the century old patriarchal ways of their village in the desert heartland of rural India. Starring Tannishtha Chaterjee, Radhika Apte and Surveen Chawla, this unforgettable tale of friendship and triumph is called Parched.

Room
Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland/Canada, Canadian Premiere
Told through the eyes of five-year-old-Jack, Room is a thrilling and emotional tale that celebrates the resilience and power of the human spirit. To Jack, the Room is the world… it’s where he was born, where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. But while it’s home to Jack, to Ma it’s a prison. Through her fierce love for her son, Ma has managed to create a childhood for him in their 10-by-10-foot space. But as Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s own desperation — she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely. Starring Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers and William H. Macy.

Sicario
Denis Villeneuve, USA, North American Premiere
In the lawless border area stretching between the U.S. and Mexico, an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is enlisted by an elite government task force official (Josh Brolin) to aid in the escalating war against drugs. Led by an enigmatic consultant with a questionable past (Benicio Del Toro), the team sets out on a clandestine journey that forces Kate to question everything that she
believes.

Son of Saul (Saul Fia)
László Nemes, Hungary, Canadian Premiere
October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

Spotlight
Tom McCarthy, USA, International Premiere
Spotlight tells the true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world’s oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper’s tenacious “Spotlight” team of reporters delves into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of
Boston’s religious, legal, and government establishment, touching off a wave of revelations around the world. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James and Billy Crudup.

Summertime (La Belle Saison)
Catherine Corsini, France, North American Premiere
Delphine, the daughter of farmers, moves to Paris in 1971 to break free from the shackles of her family and to gain her financial independence. Carole is a Parisian, living with Manuel, actively involved in the stirrings of the feminist movement. The meeting of the two women changes their lives forever. Starring Cécile De France, Izia Higelin, Noémie Lvovsky and Kévin Azaïs.

Sunset Song
Terence Davies, United Kingdom/Luxembourg, World Premiere
Terence Davies’ epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War follows a young woman’s tale of endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life. Based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur, Sunset Song stars Peter Mullan and Agyness Deyn.

Trumbo
Jay Roach, USA, World Premiere
The successful career of 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) comes to a crushing end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. Trumbo tells the story of his fight against the U.S. government and studio bosses in a war over words and freedom, which entangled everyone in Hollywood from Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne to Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

Un plus une
Claude Lelouch, France, World Premiere
Charming, successful, Antoine (Jean Dujardin) could be the hero of one of those films he composes the music for. When he leaves for a job in India, he meets Anna (Elsa Zylberstein), a woman who isn’t like him at all, but who attracts him more than anything. Together, they are going to experience an incredible journey.

Victoria
Sebastian Schipper, Germany, Canadian Premiere
On a night out in Berlin, Victoria meets four young local guys. After joining their group, she becomes their driver when they rob a bank. Finally, as dawn breaks, everyone meets their destiny.

Where to Invade Next
Michael Moore, USA, World Premiere
Oscar-winning director Michael Moore returns with what may be his most provocative and hilarious movie yet. Moore tells the Pentagon to “stand down”— he will do the invading for America from now on. Discretely shot in several countries and under the radar of the global media, Moore has made a searing cinematic work that is both up-to-the-minute and timeless.

Youth
Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France/United Kingdom/Switzerland, North American Premiere
Youth explores the lifelong bond between two friends vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred (Michael Caine) has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz), Mick (Harvey Keitel) is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last film for his muse Brenda (Jane Fonda). And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy (Paul Dano), an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance? From Italy’s Oscar-winning foreign language film writer and director Paolo Sorrentino, Youth asks if our most important and life-changing experiences can come at any time — even late — in life.

Falling in a similar pattern as other teen-pregnancy type films, The Young Kieslowski is a one-sided tale of a young man’s perspective on being thrown into pending fatherhood. While much has been made of the female perspective on unexpected pregnancy, director Kerem Sanga, (who has one other feature under his belt, 2012’s Trigger Finger), attempts to effectively and humorously portray the thoughts that go racing through the mind of a young man in a situation he has little control over.

Brian Kieslowski (Ryan Malgarini) is a recent enrollee at Cal Tech, a science geek by anyone’s definition, he has long-awaited life in college not only for a chance to escape the tension he feels at home, where his mother is slowly battling lung cancer, but also because he’ll finally be that much closer to accomplishing a more substantial life goal: losing his virginity. When he and his roommate attend a party off campus one evening he meets Leslie Mallard (Haley Lu Richardson). Playing nice-guy to her drunk-girl he helps her home, sobers her up, and ends up spending a night of getting to know this self-ascribed Christian virgin who, while possibly out of his league, seems to connect with him in some way. In a moment of spontaneity, the two decide to have sex and Brian leaves with her phone number, feeling that he’s finally accomplished the impossible. When he accidentally washes Leslie’s phone number off of his hand, he finds it difficult to follow-up with her but takes it as a sign that perhaps he’s meant to move on. Leslie, however, is discovering that her night of temptation has a more lasting consequence: she’s pregnant, with twins. Managing to track Brian down, Leslie breaks the news to him. He doesn’t take it well. Acting on his frightened impulse, Brian simply walks away, mind racing, and ends up face down in the Cal Tech fountain.

After a pep talk from friends, Brian comes to his senses, finding Leslie in class and offering her the hug she needs. From there they have THE discussion. Abortion or parenthood? But Brian, rather than risk losing Leslie’s interest (since he truly likes her) pretends to go along with her decision to keep the babies, secretly hoping her wealthy hard-edged father will talk her out of it. When she chickens out on a visit to her father, they end up at his parents where, in a hilarious scene, he’s forced to tell them the truth of their situation. From there Brian makes some predictably bad decisions, sabotaging his chances with Leslie as a way of coping with his fear of becoming a father. All leading up to an expected finale in the delivery room—where all such films tend to end up.

The Young Kieslowski, while perhaps admirable in its truth about men’s feelings of helplessness when confronted with pregnancy, does little to garner much sympathy for the typical male response. Malgarini plays Brian with just enough geeky innocence to draw out some compassion, but ultimately his attempts to reconcile the decisions he’s made don’t even out. Richardson gives warmth to Leslie and her battle to act on what she feels is right despite what her family and Brian want to push on her, but she lacks credibility. Her feelings for Brian seem mostly motivated by the connection formed between them in the lives of the children she carries, decidedly falling short of real romance. The couple have a sort of chemistry but it’s entirely formed on superficial details, and while it’s cute for the sake of the “rom” part of this rom-com, doesn’t run deep enough to be felt from the screen. The inclusion of their parent’s perspectives adds more dynamic to the story and raises the stakes somewhat, but are also rather predictable.

Sanga’s comedy incites the usual laughs that accompany a young male freaking out, but the weaknesses of Brian’s character are too disappointing to laugh through. There’s nothing progressive here, and while touching at points, and undeniably realistic (and therefore funny) in its emotional touchstones, it feels wrong to laugh at what is essentially the worst of culturally ascribed gender role behaviors.

A version of this review was originally posted as part of our 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival coverage.

After an impressive first season, that not only drew from its 1996 film origin but added elaborate depth and sustained an intriguing and comedic noir, FX’s Fargo is finally giving us an in-depth glimpse at season two.

A few things we already knew: Season two is set in 1979 in Luverne, MN and Sioux Falls, SD (a town near and dear to this website) and revolves around a case mentioned a few times in the first season. Following their established knack for an elaborate and well-rounded ensemble, the faces featured in season two’s trailer show just what a punch this next season is likely to pack. Patrick Wilson and Ted Danson are the lead law enforcement characters, trying to solve a murder that appears to include connections with what amounts to the perfect Hollywood Midwestern barbeque guest list: Jean Smart, Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Bokeem Woodbine, Jeffrey Donovan, Cristin Milioti and we didn’t even get a glimpse of Bruce Campbell yet!

The ’70s references are abundant, starting off with a Watergate joke and tying in with Dunst’s character showing an interest in ’70s cult-like New Age training program, Lifespring. Dunst always did look pretty great with feathered hair.

The trailer is plenty promising with what looks like all the same dark humor and as much if not more of the twisty murder mystery we came to crave from season one. The only downside? Because FX took their time renewing the show after season one, we have to wait until October before we get to watch. But with all that snow, it might just make for a more fitting viewing experience.

Now those who couldn’t be at Comic-Con this past weekend get a taste of what Hall H-ers have already seen, a first look at the hotly anticipated Suicide Squad. The trailer was part of the explosive Warner Brothers panel this past weekend where almost the entire cast was brought out on stage including Will Smith and Margot Robbie as well as the film’s director David Ayer.

The trailer definitely gives us a sense of the Suicide Squad’s darker anti-heroics, finishing with a goosebump-inducing look at Jared Leto’s Joker. Along with the foul-mouthed Deadpool being a huge draw this past weekend at Comic-Con, it seems like the masses are getting a little bored with the straight-laced do-gooding superheroes that have saturated the movies so far. Time for a new form of justice.

Let us know what you think of the trailer in the comments and if you think the Suicide Squad casting is everything we hoped.

Comic-Con isn’t over yet, but if there was a winner of the convention, the trophy might have been handed out early to the Lucasfilm Star Wars: The Force Awakens panel.

Chris Hardwick moderated the panel to a packed Hall H in San Diego where some fans had camped for two days and waited all day for the 5:30 event. Star Wars was the first film to try out film previewing back in the late ’70s before the film’s release, setting a precedent that has all but taken over what was traditionally a convention for printed comics. So it was all too fitting to have J.J. Abrams present his new installment of the famous film franchise at Comic-Con.

Along with exec producer Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (and Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) writer Lawrence Kasdan, Hardwick generally gushed with the trio for a while about how momentous this project is, the significance of the Star Wars legacy and the wonder of the people who are involved in this new round of Star Wars films.

Abrams expressed awe around having just worked on the film’s soundtrack with John Williams—they have a rough edit of the film at this point—and stated “There’s nothing normal about anything that’s happening.”

They showed the behind the scenes footage (above) and there were many wet eyes at the care Abrams is taking with this sacred franchise. Among the things revealed by the footage: Simon Pegg clearly plays a role in the film (the only Star Trek/Star Wars crossover?) and also emphasized just how NOT CG this film really is going to be. (Though we have a feeling Abrams won’t be able to resist a lens flare or two.)

Abrams, Kennedy and Kasdan were joined by the film’s stars: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac. Shortly after them, the bad guys showed up: Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson (who we hadn’t known previously was on the dark side), and Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma. One of the things they focused on in the Q&A was the importance to the filmmakers to keep up diversity in the cast, in The Force Awakens and all upcoming Star Wars saga and anthology films.

Not much was revealed, Adam Driver was especially loathe to reveal too much. Gleeson let slip that the base his character presides over is called “Starkiller”.

Then Hardwick sneakily brought out Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford, which rather brought the hall of 6500 to their knees. They bantered about their age and the weirdness of being called the Legacy cast, and Fisher joked about how Star Wars has become a right of passage in families, where parents now strategize when to introduce their kids to the series saying “If we don’t like the same character, I’m not going to like my kid.” Ford expressed gratitude for the franchise, as it kicked off his career. As far as their roles in the new film, Hamill just said he was glad he didn’t have to go to Tashi to pick up any power converters and Fisher lamented that this film wasn’t more girly, suggesting to Abrams there should have been a shopping planet.

As if the audience wasn’t riled up enough, they were walked to an outdoor symphony venue behind the convention center and treated to an exclusive music of Star Wars symphony immediately following the panel, a first in Comic-Con history. It was a true Disney/Star Wars event with everyone receiving a free light saber and ending with an impressive fireworks display. Those of us there won’t soon forget the spectacle and the momentous feeling of the start to a new era of our most beloved franchise.

Game of Thrones is a hot ticket at Comic-Con and usually one of the more exciting panels to get into—they certainly give the best swag—but this year, several weeks after that tense season finale, the cast and crew in attendance on this year’s panel were uncomfortably mute.

Moderated by Game of Thrones super fan, Seth Meyers, the panel started almost straight away with only a quick sizzle reel of Game of Thrones references in pop culture, including Meyer’s own Jon Snow at a Dinner party sketch and Sesame Street. Then Meyers asked a few fun but ultimately non-newsworthy type questions.

He goaded Gwendoline Christie about her character’s inability to do the one job set out for her, referencing Brienne of Tarth’s oath to save Sansa by waiting for her to light a candle in a tower. “You don’t have to take these oaths,” he teased. There was some banter from John Bradley and Hannah Murray about their characters, Gilly and Sam, finally getting together on the show. Everyone else generally joked about the miserable state of affairs for most of their characters and then they moved on to audience questions.

That’s when things started to feel especially awkward as panelists, clearly in terror of revealing secrets, gave one word answers or vague speculations about the fates of their characters. Meyers interceded a few times to establish that the panelists wouldn’t be able to say much.

What we did learn? That Obama’s favorite episode was “The Red Wedding” and he asked director David Nutter directly if Jon Snow was dead. Nutter holds the stance he’s had since the finale aired: “Jon Snow is deader than dead.” This speculator thinks his consistency of wording is more encouraging than not. “Dead” isn’t always dead in Westeros.

One confirmed dead person, however: Stannis Baratheon. Nutter made a comment about the character—considered unofficially dead only because his death wasn’t shown on screen—that closes the case on him.

Other things we know: That Conleth Hill (Lord Varys) is hilarious and needs his own comedy show, that Maisey Williams (Arya) thinks she’ll have a lot of action next season despite being blind, and that the fun audition reel (see video below) of the cast proves they all deserve to be cast.

Otherwise we remain like Jon Snow: we know nothing.

Game of Thrones audition reel

The Walking Dead panel gave fans a good idea of what to expect for season 6, beginning almost immediately with a trailer for the upcoming season—premiering in a 90-minute episode on Sunday October 11 at 9pm—that opens with lead character Rick Grimes running, and running hard. Not a new sight after five seasons of the show.

Most notable from the trailer is Morgan (Lennie James) joining the clan at Alexandria after having trailed Rick throughout last season. The trailer alludes to some tension between Rick and Morgan but showrunner Scott Gimple, immediately after the trailer played, admitted to the show’s notorious tendency to spin previews into misleading audiences from clues to what is upcoming.

The most interesting part of the trailer, for fans, was at the very end, where fan-favorite Darryl (Norman Reedus) is seen bound with a gun to his head by the leader of the Wolves, the menacing group we’ve only begun to see introduced as a threat to Rick and co. Interesting to note, Ethan Embry was featured as a new cast member in the trailer and Gimple revealed Merritt Wever would also be joining the cast.

Panel moderator Chris Hardwick led most of the cast of the show, Gimple, and executive producers Gale Anne Hurd and Greg Nicotero through questions around upcoming story and character development.

Gimple did say there would be more flashbacks in the new season, saying a whole episode may be entirely in flashback and that they would “definitely be playing with time.”

He also said the Wolves will play a part in a way audiences won’t expect. Andrew Lincoln, who plays Sheriff leader Rick Grimes was asked about his characters’ final facial hair moment this past season. Does he miss the beard? He stated, “My wife doesn’t miss it” and joked about how co-star Steven Yeuen remarked after the shave that he looked like he had a shrunken head.

Hardwick asked Yeuen about Glenn—his character—and one of his storylines this past season: Glenn’s frustrating decision not to kill Nicholas. Yeuen spoke about Glenn’s desire for Nicholas’s redemption and his own need to save himself. But he did joke he wouldn’t trust Nicholas to push any revolving doors.

It was Lennie James’s (Morgan) first time on the panel. He spoke about Morgan and Rick’s “particular man-love” hinting that maybe things won’t be quite so tense between Morgan and Rick next season like the trailer insinuates.

Sonequa Martin-Green spoke passionately about the arc of her character Sasha, saying it was an honor to portray PTSD in honor of those who have suffered and that she thinks Sasha will find hope at the end of the tunnel.

Audience favorite Norman Reedus was initially given some rather bland questions including what he does to get into character—Motorhead and Candy Crush as it turns out—and for the record his favorite emoji is the red balloon. Eventually he was asked his predictions for Darryl next season. He commented that Darryl isn’t into suburbia so he’s likely to be getting restless.

As has become tradition they played a blooper reel and the cast showed their tightknit comradery and senses of humor. Andrew Lincoln admitted his mother would like Rick and Michonne to get together. Gimple says he’ll take note.

The 90-minute season premiere will preview at Madison Square Garden and fans can catch up on all the seasons as AMC shows an entire season every Sunday starting later in July.

Open Road was by far the biggest wildcard of the day in Hall H as no one really knew which of the only handful of films announced by Open Road films was the most Comic-Con worthy. But by far the most Con-cloutiest of their upcoming stars is Bill Murray, who stars in the Barry Levinson helmed Rock the Kasbah. And he did not disappoint the fans, making his first Comic-Con appearance ever.

Murray entered from the back of Hall H to the tune of “Smoke on the Water.” At first he appeared as his character in the upcoming film, Richie Lanz, a music manager who manages a musician (played by Zooey Deschanel) and travels with her for a gig in Afghanistan.

Mitch Glazer, the film’s writer (who also wrote Scrooged starring Murray), joined him on the panel and spoke about Murray’s tendency to “re-write” when acting. He dispelled the rumor that Murray goes rogue stating the actor makes only smart changes when improvising.

The film also stars Kate Hudson and Bruce Willis. Murray told a story about Bruce Willis and an past SNL connection Willis recently informed him of. Willis was once a page on the show, and apparently Willis lamented that Murray and Gilda Radner were the only ones nice to him.

In true chaotic Murray-fashion he stopped the panel at one point to get everyone to sing the song of their choosing for 30 seconds. A hilarious and very Bill Murray sort of moment.

With Rock the Kasbah’s classic rock soundtrack there was much discussion around music. When asked about his favorites Murray surprised with old and new music recommendations. None so surprising though as Miley Cyrus, who Murray thinks “is really f***ing good.”

As for future projects for Murray? He did confirm he’s been working out, and is hopeful to be considered for the new Han Solo prequel role.

Those of us in the film journalism field this morning woke up (at least us west-coasters) to disheartening news. The Dissolve—one of the few places left where true blue lovers of film could play, explore, learn and discuss the great depths of the art of filmmaking—is, well, dissolving. Those of us who have made it a daily habit to swing by The Dissolve will find a hole in our daily lives, a guaranteed moment of each day where the mundanity of pop-culture ephemerality was filled instead with thoughtfulness, analysis, and in-depth thought. The complete opposite of the rabid opinions prevalent in our Rotten Tomato world, The Dissolve was where you could go for educated and thought-provoking reviews and articles that pushed past a measly 500 words to delve into history, form, technique and the significance of this medium we love so dearly.

The love and care of The Dissolve’s writers—among them editorial director Keith Phipps, managing editor Genevieve Koski, senior editor Tasha Robinson, and editor Scott Tobias—was evident in every piece they published, whether it was analyzing a single shot of a classic film, providing a list of essential female characters to know, or exploring the cultural significance of a film.

Keith Phipps wrote in today’s goodbye article “The End”:

For the past two years—well, two years this Friday—it’s been our pleasure to put up this site, a site founded on and driven by a love for movies, alongside a company with passion and talent for creating thoughtful, important work. Sadly, because of the various challenges inherent in launching a freestanding website in a crowded publishing environment, financial and otherwise, today is the last day we will be doing that.

As an editor here at Way Too Indie I can’t count how many times my advice to new film journalists has been simply “Go read everything at The Dissolve.” We know the talented writers who have fueled their site will find new homes, and as long as they continue to grace us with their wisdom, they can be assured readership from everyone over here. We refuse to believe that the death of a website implies the decline of critical thinking in cinema. Quality films will always need advocates, and Hollywood will always need the critics to keep them in check.

You’ve been the sort of community we’ve looked up to and aspired to, The Dissolve. Thank you for everything.

Success is the best revenge they say. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are proving the point. Nothing quite like slapping the Academy in the face for that snubbed Oscar by going on to do bigger and better projects. And these days no project is bigger than one with the Star Wars franchise sticker slapped on it.

The dynamic duo behind The LEGO Movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street aren’t just being handed a Star Wars anthology film, they are being handed one starring everyone’s favorite character, Han Solo.

The film will be written by Lawrence and Jon Kasdan (Lawrence wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens) and will focus on a young Han Solo, the scoundrel and smuggler we all fell in love with at the cantina on Mos Eisley. You know, the kind of Han Solo who would shoot first in a blaster fight.

In the news announcement on the Star Wars website, Lord and Miller had this to say:

“This is the first film we’ve worked on that seems like a good idea to begin with. We promise to take risks, to give the audience a fresh experience, and we pledge ourselves to be faithful stewards of these characters who mean so much to us. This is a dream come true for us. And not the kind of dream where you’re late for work and all your clothes are made of pudding, but the kind of dream where you get to make a film with some of the greatest characters ever, in a film franchise you’ve loved since before you can remember having dreams at all.”

Exactly the sort of statement we’d expect from the offbeat duo, and with Star Wars fans harboring more expectations than almost any fandom in existence they’ll have their work cut out for them. The film has a May 25, 2018 release date attached to it and as we wait in anticipation we’ll have to bide our time building LEGO Millenium Falcons.

It’s a strange realization to come to that more and more from here on out, documentary films will pretty much make themselves. The historical equivalent to picking up the diaries of the deceased and publishing them; now we need only piece together the digitized documentation of people’s lives. This process is easiest when it comes to celebrities, barraged as they are by media attention, documented far beyond what they probably would wish for themselves, immortalized in the camera phones of the masses. Director Asif Kapadia scarcely supplements the hours of pre-existing film of Amy Winehouse in his documentary, Amy. Amy would be turning 32 this year, and because of her age—and her immense fame—there are hours of video featuring the talented singer from a young age all the way up until her untimely death. Wisely Kapadia focuses his documentarian eye—or should I say ear?—on Winehouse’s musical ability. While much of her best work was steeped in the pain of her experiences, what Kapadia makes clear is that it was likely the pain and abuse from those closest to her, not her stardom, that would eventually lead to her demise. This revelation makes the pain of losing so large a talent painfully fresh.

The film begins with Winehouse, aged 14, singing a beyond-her-years soulful rendition of “Happy Birthday” to a girlfriend. Her talent is obvious. She feigns some self-consciousness in front of the camera, but her natural showmanship can’t be denied. From there she is captured on camera phones and digital recorders at her first gigs, playing in bars, on car trips with her friends and her first manager, Nick Shymansky. Very little is professional footage. Once they get into the years where she was picking up some fame, there are a few TV spots and formal interviews with her, but not many. Interestingly, what they reveal is a girl who cared very little for what the public had to say. In one especially hilarious interview the camera shows Winehouse, eyes rolling, as a reporter tries to compare her work with another popular artist. Winehouse’s priorities were always clear and evident. She wanted to make her music. Just as clear throughout the film are Winehouse’s addictions, to both substances and unhealthy people.

Kapadia did 100 or so interviews to capture the complete story of Winehouse, who ran in a variety of circles, famous and non-famous. None of the interviews are shown on camera, but they act as narration for the film. The clear voice of influence in Winehouse’s life is that of her father, Mitch Winehouse. He speaks about his affair and eventual divorce of Winehouse’s mother. She speaks at one point of her father’s absence, her tone implying life was better off without him. Later footage makes it clear just how much his departure affected her. In the song that would eventually shoot her to stardom, “Rehab,” Winehouse’s lyrics flash across the screen “They tried to make me go to rehab… but if my daddy thinks I’m fine…” Throughout the film Winehouse’s lyrics are featured on-screen, the truth of her life seeping through each of them. “Rehab” is no different, with Amy’s friends describing the first time they tried to get her help for her alcoholism. She would only agree if her father told her to. He said she was fine, so she didn’t go. A pivotal moment before fame would sweep into her life, lessening the influence of those who cared for her.

The rollercoaster ride of Winehouse’s fame, her stormy and obsessive relationship with former husband Blake Fielder, her six Grammy award wins, all play out, merging into the moments the audience most remembers of her. Her shocked expression winning her first Grammy. Her TV performances. Her tiny body growing thinner with each magazine cover. It’s all excellent editing by Chris King (Senna, Exit Through the Gift Shop) who manages to take what is mostly shaky unprofessional footage of Winehouse and stretch it into a film. Kapadia and King hold on Amy’s expressions as her friends and family talk through her path of self-destruction and they act as the inner monologue we’ll never be able to hear from Winehouse directly. Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert, Winehouse’s childhood friends, provide the best picture of Amy Winehouse the person and it’s their regrets and passion that bring the most emotion in the end.

The saddest and most compelling theme of the film, though, is the real example of the effects of an absent father on a growing girl. Not to place blame, but the film weaves its story firmly around Amy and Mitch’s relationship. Kapadia chose the right thread to run with. The argument that many of Winehouse’s issues stemmed from the all-too-real psychological impact of the lack of positive male affirmation and attention early in life fits her tragic tale. Her adoration—addiction even—to Fielder is further testament to the long-lasting effects. What first feels like it will be the story of fame-induced-ruin is actually a cautionary tale around a prevalent problem. Compounded, of course, by fame but rooted in the significance of having a support system with the right intentions.

There are a number of scenes at the end of the film where the strobe lights of paparazzi are disorienting and uncomfortable. And this isn’t the only way Kapadia seeks to get the audience to feel the tension of Amy Winehouse’s life. In Amy, he has crafted one of the most sincere depictions of the truth of celebrity and the truth that it’s not always fame that creates personal demons. No one who sees this film will leave wishing for notoriety.

There’s a certain sense of inevitability in the death of Amy Winehouse. Those who remember it all say the same thing, that it was both shocking and unsurprising at the same time. Kapadia poses the question to us all: How could someone watched so closely, so obviously at risk even, die practically before our eyes? And what is our complicity in her fate? No matter your level of admiration for her music, this is the message that makes Amy essential viewing.

It’s not uncommon for film directors to be referred to as “architects.” In many instances, these crafters have to build whole worlds and universes. Illustrator Federico Babina decided to take this turn of phrase and go someplace literal with it, fashioning visual imagery of what our favorite directors might look like if their particular styles were put into the form of houses. It’s fascinating to say the least.

Babina calls this series of illustrations “Archidirector” saying “Directors are like the architects of cinema. They are those that build stories that like buildings envelop the viewer and carry it in a different world. Each with their own style, language, and aesthetics think, plan design and build places and stories that host us for the duration of the movie.”

His collection includes 27 illustrations, ranging from Hitchcock to Fellini, Von Trier to Jarmusch. Check out the entire collection at Design Boom and buy the prints at Babina’s Society 6 shop.

Before we get into this, let’s first talk about Samuel L. Jackson. Let’s talk about how he was, for a time, the highest-grossing actor of all time and still hangs out in the top 5. Let’s talk about how the man has acted in over 160 films; about how at 67 years old he’s still playing the badass in charge in movies like, well, every Marvel movie for one where he’s basically the leader of the superhero pack as Nick Fury. And all with no superpowers, only an eye patch and a degree in kicking ass. Let’s focus on all these good things before we remember that Samuel L. Jackson has never played the President of the United States in a film…until now. He’s been a Jedi already for Pete’s sake. What’s unfortunate for the great Mr. Jackson, is that the first time he chooses (or is offered) to play the President is for a film that truly underutilizes the talent he possesses. Heck, Samuel L. Jackson took on the seemingly insurmountable task of facing off against snakes on an aircraft and turned camp into cult history, so why have we never entrusted him with the (fake) care of the most powerful country in the world until now?

What makes even less sense is that the film in question, Big Game, is directed by a man, Jalmari Helander, who has already created what can only be defined as a Finnish cult Christmas-horror film, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. So here’s a man with some experience in turning ridiculousness into something fun. Big Game is neither ridiculous or fun. This is a film full of talented actors (Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, and Victor Garber are all featured in addition to Samuel L. Jackson), who are given low-substance dialogue and the essence of a plot in what is essentially a high budget National Geographic explosion pic.

The film tidily leads us through its third-grade reading level script with dozens of aerial shots of the Nordic mountains. Then on to Air Force One where President William Alan Moore (Jackson) laments the day’s headlines—no explanation for how the current printed paper could make its way onto an aircraft flying over Finland; we couldn’t have written in an iPad here?—that exclaim how poorly he’s tracking in the approval polls. He jokes with his head of secret service, Morris (Ray Stevenson), about how he’d rather take a bullet than never eat a cookie again. An insensitive thing to say to a man who obviously very recently took a bullet for the President—wait, a President who underwent an assassination attempt is polling low?—and conveniently expresses his regret for forcing Morris into retirement in the near future. Morris doesn’t seem too happy about the forced career move. He could be wearing a shirt that reads “Traitor” at this point and it wouldn’t be more obvious where the film is going.

Meanwhile, on the ground below in Finland, Oskari (Onni Tommila), a boy on the brink of 13 goes with his father to the wilderness to begin his rite of passage in their community: a solo hunt where he’ll prove himself a man by bagging a large animal or come back to embarrassment. Without much faith from his father, Oskari takes off on his four-wheeler. The young man gets bigger game than he could have imagined, however, when Morris’s partnership with a terrorist, Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus), brings down Air Force One and the President escapes in a capsule that the boy stumbles upon. This short action sequence of the film, albeit the catalyst for the film’s entire plot, focuses on spectacle with nary a thought for consistency. For one, the President has only just risen for the day and dressed, unable even to finish putting his shoes on, when Morris ushers him off the plane, and yet all the next frames involve the plane going down in the night-darkened forest. I mean, I get it, explosions look much better in the dark, but it’s a weird discrepancy. Morris’s means of ensuring no one can get to the President is also too simple, and one has to wonder why some people die so easily and yet Morris deliberately makes killing the President more difficult.

But in a film titled Big Game, it’s reasonable to expect the action will focus on “the hunt.” So, Oskari finds the President, and they banter about him not recognizing the most recognizable man in the world—a little funny since he’s played by a highly recognizable actor. Oskari proceeds to keep the President alive, using his camping skills and bonding with President Moore over his fears of disappointing his father. There’s a lot of talk of bravery in its many forms. Then the very next morning the bad guys show up and immediately overtake the President. Well, so much for “the hunt” theory. They are about to cart the President off when Oskari finds his bravery and swoops in to save the President.

Back in the U.S. the assembled leaders watch all of what’s taking place via satellite like it’s some sort of movie, no one taking any real action only sipping on their coffee, eating their takeout food, and putting on their worried faces. Victor Garber is the Vice President and he does a good job yelling maniacally in frustration. Jim Broadbent has an excellent intelligent deadpan, and yet as the retired “best CIA agent” the country ever had, he mostly keeps his cool while stating the obvious while everyone ogles. This depiction of American political-military efforts, if enacted in real life, would have meant our demise as a country long ago.

With explosions galore and enough aerial widescreen shots to make up an impressive Finland tourist video, Big Game has a fair amount of spectacle, but all of its substance lies hidden away within the treasure troves of talent possessed by its widely underutilized cast. As an actor who’s proven he can lead films to success when given enough freedom, it’s astonishing how passive a character Samuel L. Jackson plays in this film. The man isn’t even given any good one-liners to laugh at. Tommila ends up being the real star, so younger audiences may find appeal in the film, but he plays Oskari as always serious, there’s no real youthful playfulness found within the film. There’s also hardly any stakes. The terrorist should be the most frightening aspect of the film, and yet he literally has no agenda, no real reason for choosing to capture and kill the most powerful man in the world.

Big Game benefits from its location’s beauty, and it will earn a certain draw with Samuel L. Jackson on its poster, but Helander has definitely missed a chance to play up the campy action potential of Jackson, the premise, and a script with built-in inanity.

It’s not always entirely clear how director David Gordon Green chooses and/or writes the projects he’ll direct. At best we can call him eclectic, at worst erratic. Clearly he doesn’t want to be pegged into any one genre, a noble intention, but it means watching his films is an exercise in expectation. You just never know what you’re going to get. Manglehorn is a nostalgic drama with notes of comedy and plenty of Green’s Malick-y influenced quiet, but mostly it feels like a sleepy character study about a man lost in his uninteresting past.

That man is A.J. Manglehorn, a locksmith in a small Texas town (a favorite setting of Green’s) who lives inside his lonely rituals of work, small talk with the local bank teller (Holly Hunter), eating at a nearby cafeteria, and writing love letters to Clara, the one who got away years ago. His relationship with his workaholic ambitious son (Chris Messina) is tenuous and the closest friend he has in his life is his fluffy white cat, Fanny. As Manglehorn goes about his life, building up the courage to hang out with Dawn the bank teller and explore what it might be like to have a real life (and female) friend, his love letters to Clara lamenting the lost past they once shared are narrated by Pacino with a slight Southern drawl keeping the past as ever-present.

As almost a metaphor for how pointless his love letter sending is, his mailbox has a beehive growing out of it, making checking for daily mail a physical challenge. Everything else happening plot-wise is predictable; since it’s established so heavily that Manglehorn is lost in his nostalgia and couldn’t possibly move forward without first making a disaster of things. And so he manages to further estrange himself from his son, be unfeeling toward Dawn, and be entirely too caught up in his cat’s health. It’s all just so uninteresting.

As if to directly correlate the level of dull content pieced into the script, Green cast the legendary Al Pacino to play the titular character. In fact, Green created the entire idea for the film based on an interaction he had with Pacino years previous where he wanted to tap into Pacino’s particular talent for being an indecisive and enigmatic character. He was right to want to utilize the particular flavor of idiosyncratic that Pacino continues to master as he matures, but leaving out context is the film’s biggest flaw, and it seems a writing issue.

The film’s writer, Paul Logan, was a PA on Green’s film Prince Avalanche. He’s written no other produced features, and the fact that most PAs on film sets have almost no interaction with the director makes it all the more impressive this young man was given the opportunity to write a film for David Gordon Green, especially one with Al Pacino hand-picked for the role. But talk about not taking advantage of a situation. A film that lives in the past, but never really explains the past is a film about nothing. It’s just too hard to tap into Manglehorn’s all-consuming nostalgia without any justification for it. The forward movement of the story is molasses-paced, and while sweet and subdued perhaps, it’s just too inexplicable most of the time. Even Manglehorn’s eventual decision to break off the honeycomb below his mailbox and stuff it inside the box feels less like a moment of triumph and more like the inexplicable actions of a confused old man.

Like all of Green’s other films, there is a distinct color quality to the film. Manglehorn is green-tinged and highly vignetted, adding to the inclusive feel of the film and, perhaps inadvertently, emphasizing the small-scale of its scope. The music of the film is manipulative, attempting to evoke feeling and there is too much reliance on it to add where the writing lacks.

Al Pacino is great as lonely and quirky but has almost a little too much street cred to be believable fully. Holly Hunter is easily likable in almost everything, and she really does come across as the sort of bank teller anyone would want in their life. She’s the only character for which genuine emotion is evoked and more filmmakers should really be utilizing her these days. But neither of these talent behemoths can make up for what is a droll and partially formed script. David Gordon Green can continue to explore and take chances, but like Your Highness and The Sitter, we’re going to have to continue watch as he sometimes fumbles.

It’s an interesting sensation, and one of the more unique aspects of film, to experience the flux between spectator and consort. To pass judgment one moment, and then to find oneself represented on-screen the next. With his first foray into writing, directing and starring in a feature film, young filmmaker Matthew Brown presents a very natural, and at times tediously sincere, portrayal of one night in the life of a group of high school friends. The longer we’re given time with these four average, Normaltown, USA friends, the more their range of emotions and life approaches resonate and serve to remind those of us who left high school behind many years ago of just how significant a period of time it really is in forming our selves.

Brown plays William, the eldest in his group of friends and designated driver. One cold winter night he and his three best friends Eric (Gabriel Arant), Gary (Joshua Pagan), and Alissa (Emma Corley Geer) do their best to avoid going home but also decide against heading to a party going on. When they hear the party was broken up by the police, Alissa’s friend Kate asks for a ride home from the party for her and her friend Alexa. William, harboring a long-time crush on Alexa finds himself presented with the ingredients for what could be a truly memorable evening. He agrees to pick them up and is almost immediately thwarted when Kate and Alexa decide to just go home and sleep at Kate’s. But Kate’s mom won’t let Alexa in and William invites her to join the group as they wander toward morning.

The group heads first to a hot tub at Eric’s house where Alissa does her best not to be self-conscious around the beautiful and popular Alexa, joking to her about how happy she is to no longer be the only girl in the group for once, her face betraying that she clearly feels the opposite. William does his best to play it cool around Alexa, but sad news puts a serious spin on their fanatics as they learn that one of the teens who left the party earlier died in a car accident on his way home. William is the only one of the group to have known him in close capacity and he conceals the gravity of this news under his teenaged ambivalence.

Admittedly the film’s slow opening feels like we are about to be shown an iPhone’s view of the banal nightlife of rural teenagers. I felt like 30-going-on-90 as I refrained from yelling at the characters to stop mumbling and wasting gas just to avoid their warm beds. But watching William cope with the news of a friend’s death (and indeed mortality altogether) over the course of the evening, and seeing the very real possibility that he may get what he most hopes for with Alexa, and hearing him casually but endearingly discuss his future prospects and plans with his optimistic and encouraging best friend Alissa, slowly sucked me back into my 18-year-old body facing the cusp of adulthood and cleaving to my friends and everything that felt familiar.

It may not be at all times enlivening, amusing, or all that intricate in its plot, but In the Treetops is one of the most authentic representations of that magic moment before one transitions to adulthood. It’s a moment with very little perspective given the shortness of one’s life, and yet every emotion is felt so hugely and every detail seems so significant. Despite his casual coolness, William’s affection for his friends is made clear, his sympathy around their family situations, and his burgeoning adult understanding of the difference between lust and love and how one comes fast and fades quickly, while the other comes slowly and can last forever.

The film’s visuals—camerawork by Donald Monroe—aren’t especially complicated, but are just handheld enough and tightly focused on the characters so as to give off a feeling of being another member of the group. This film isn’t meant to be watched casually, the gems within it lie in seeing the way Alissa’s eyes watch William as she tentatively scopes out his plans for the future, her hope for her own part in that future made obvious in what those eyes convey. Or in how Gary and William bicker over Gary borrowing his jacket, only for William to understand the broader significance of showing his best friend that he has his back even if it’s in the simple act of sharing clothing.

While other teen-centric films tend to focus on the nostalgia, ease, or the comparatively silly drama of the teen years, this film expertly—and it may have to do with the age of its filmmaker—depicts a true-to-life window into the average American teenage experience. Looking past its slower moments—though they hold their importance in the accuracy of boredom in the teenage world—In the Treetops establishes two very naturalistic actors in Matthew Brown and Emma Corley Geer, and if Brown continues to grow with his art, and maintains his attention to truth and nuance, it appears we have a very promising new filmmaker on the scene.

There’s something really satisfying in a well-done adaptation, especially if it manages to walk its own original trail. Directed by brothers Adam and Aaron Nee, Band of Robbers takes the Americana classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and brings them to the present day in a hilarious crime comedy of errors that manages to maintain Mark Twain’s youthful silliness and broader themes of friendship and justice. Adam Nee also stars in the film as the scheming glory-glutton Tom Sawyer, and Kyle Gallner (Dear White People) stars as his best friend Huck Finn.

Their adventure begins with Huck Finn’s narration explaining the nature of his and Tom’s lifelong friendship. Since they were children, they’ve been on a search for an old pirate’s lost treasure, thwarted by local bad guy Injun Joe (around whom a hilarious recurring joke of cultural identity consistently delivers laughs). Years later, Huck, the one born into an abusive family, ends up spending some time in jail, and Tom, always looking for a way to glean some attention, has wound up as a police officer forced into the shadow of his hot-shot detective older brother. When Huck gets released, Tom gets their gang of friends together, including Joe Harper (Matthew Gray Gubler), Ben Rogers (Hannibal Buress), and Tommy Barnes (Johnny Pemberton).

Never one to waste a minute, the eccentric Tom takes advantage of the not-so-secret surprise party they’ve thrown for Huck and explains to the men that he’s hatched a full-proof plan to make them all rich, not to mention earn himself some deserved respect at work. He’s been given insider information from Muff Potter (Cooper Huckabee) that Injun Joe (Stephen Lang) has that long-lost treasure and has placed it in the safe kept at the local pawn shop. With his fast-talking ways and earnest eagerness,Tom convinces his band of misfits to agree to a preposterous plan that includes pretending to be Latinos in order to rip off the pawn shop, present Tom as a cop who happens upon the scene and tries to help, and then make off with the treasure they’ve sought for so long.

Of course things don’t go as they expected. Tom is matched with an unexpected new partner, Becky Thatcher (Melissa Benoist, Whiplash), and suddenly has an eager-to-please police officer in the way of his plan. He isn’t the only one who scrimps on the details of the plan, and soon the haphazard band of robbers have more than just the law out for them. But they can’t quit just yet when they come to realize they are closer to finding the treasure then they realized.

The film breaks down the heist into neat sections, the stakes steadily building. In the same way Twain’s classic tale provides very real danger for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, so do the Nee brothers keep the dark edge to their quirky comedy. But more significant is how consistent and true their characters remain. Not only to their boyish source material, but as wholly likable even in the midst of their scatterbrained venture.

Those familiar with the original stories will find the clever references to the character’s personalities and adventures amusing. Those unfamiliar will find a mischievous caper featuring perfectly delivered jokes, colorful charm, and sincere performances. The cinematography is grand enough to imbue an adventuresome vibe, but is mostly centered on its main characters in the midst of their action. The music is especially well curated, fitting the idiosyncrasies of the film and adding an extra layer of fun.

With such a large ensemble some of the talented co-stars aren’t given as much screen time as would satisfy, but this is truly Tom and Huck’s tale, and Nee and Gallner have a tangible chemistry that makes their unlikely friendship feel fitting. While Gallner narrates as Huck and is the moral compass to Tom’s crooked cop, Nee really shines with his comedic timing and bizarre charm. Band of Robbers is an exceptional ensemble comedy and an adventurous and original update that surely even Mark Twain would find flattering and quick-witted.

Whether they were inspired by the similarly titled Kanye West song or not, the title of this warm but silly caper comedy quite aptly fits the film’s rather obvious but chucklesome plot. Directed by Ian Edelman and starring Luis Guzman and Edgar Garcia as the titular Puerto Ricans, Luis and Eddie, the film starts with the pair as brothers-in-law and police partners working in the rather un-sexy field of handbag knockoffs. After a particularly clever undercover operation where they take down a Louis Vuitton fake manufacturer, they are handpicked by a popular French handbag designer, Colette (Alice Taglioni), and her business partner, to track down which of their colleagues has stolen one of Colette’s bags and may be intending to sell it to the knockoff market.

As per usual in these sorts of buddy comedies, one of the men is married, Eddie, and one is determinedly single, Luis. Eddie is married to Luis’s sister Gloria (Rosie Perez, and ridiculously underused) and can’t seem to get things right as he forgets their anniversary and then fails to deliver any sort of celebration to make up for it. Luis is (inexplicably) dating Vanessa (Rosario Dawson) who is getting antsy that he won’t pop the question and gives him an ultimatum when he lets slip that he may never want to marry.

When the offer to track down the stealer of the handbag in Paris comes along, not to mention a hefty reward offer, they decide taking the job may be their opportunity to make things right with their chicas. The usual sort of aloofness ensues, as two hard-nosed NYPD Puerto Ricans could never be expected to know how to behave in a chic a place as Paris *sigh*. Some deserved laughs arrive in the form of Eddie’s willingness to learn and experience the Parisian life. Luis is more determined to track down the thief, get his money, and go. Luis, usually the ladies man (aren’t all middle-aged Puerto Rican men?) is confused to find Eddie and his mild Dad-like empathetic married-man qualities seem to win over the Parisian ladies more than Luis’s attempts.

The two interview a few women close to Colette, dressing up in silly costumes and making up ridiculous cover stories in order to win trust. At one point they have a lead, and then it becomes obvious they don’t. They butt heads with the Paris police. They generally bumble about. It’s all rather predictable. Strangely the writers, Ian Edelman and Neel Shah, decided that the wrench in Luis and Eddie’s relationship would be around Luis’s misconception that Eddie and Colette are spending a little too much time together. As if anything in Eddie’s already established personality makes him appear like an adulterer?

The end result is a weak plot and silly concept utilizing two genuinely talented hispanic actors who just can’t quite make up for it all. The entire thing reeks of formulation and rather generic comedy. While Luis Guzman should probably have been given a headlining platform long ago, and as much as we love Guzman and Garcia in Edelman’s How to Make it In America, the content here is far too weak for the talent involved. Garcia, a relatively inexperienced actor, is surprisingly lovable here if somewhat flat in his delivery.

Considering the stated cultural identity of the film, it really doesn’t play off of this much at all. Only with the usual hispanic tropes. The fact that both Rosario Dawson and Rosie Perez were cast and then given all of maybe 15 minutes combined screen time, is just puzzling. It may just be Edelman hasn’t quite grasped the long-form of feature films, as the entire premise of Puerto Ricans in Paris would make for a great short sketch on television, but over the course of 80 minutes (short even for a comedy feature) the film is agreeable but not all that winsome.

It’s rare I start a movie immediately believing I hate it, end the film feeling like maybe I’d misjudged, and two days later feel even more convinced it’s an interesting if not groundbreaking film. Filmed on 35mm and left in its grittiest state—the colors have a relatively untreated feel, like a ’70s Dirty Harry film—Too Late is an L.A. noir shot in five continuous take scenes. With old-fashioned noir lines spouted from the mouths of modern LA characters, the film feels exceptionally off in its attempts to homage older films, but the building mystery and the always engaging John Hawkes, elevate the film much further than it possibly deserves.

Told out of order, the film opens on Dorothy (Crystal Reed), who looks like more of a Little Red Riding Hood in her red sweatshirt, and who quickly becomes the prey of several men as she hangs out in the hills of Elysian Park overlooking downtown L.A. When she has trouble making a call from her dated flip phone, she asks two passing drug dealers (Ryder Strong and Dash Mihok) for the use of their phone. The men, who had just previously been discussing movie tropes and discussing how much easier things would be if at the climax of a film all could be revealed by one character simply handing another character a copy of the film to catch them up—Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead being their example of a time this would have come in handy—lend Dorothy their phone. She calls John Hawkes’ Sampson, a private detective, who seems to have an affection for the girl despite the two having only spent one night together a year previous. The camera sloppily zooms in over to Chinatown from the hilltop to focus on Sampson as he takes the call.

Sampson jumps in his Thunderbird to come get the distraught Dorothy, Jesse and Matthew the drug dealers leave her with some ecstasy, and soon enough Dorothy finds herself chatting with a slimy park ranger who uses such unbelievably charming and flirtatious language any woman watching would have their creeper-radar at DEFCON 1. That Dorothy, a supposedly somewhat street-wise stripper, continues to chat with him becomes increasingly unbelievable. And its only the first instance of almost every female in the film being given highly implausible and slightly exploitive material to work with.

The mystery unfolds at the end of this scene and we jump ahead to the end of the story, then back to before the beginning, then back to the middle, then over to what would be the penultimate scene if anything went chronologically. It’s a good pace, though it takes some catching up to understand. The stakes often don’t feel quite high enough, though there is a satisfying sort of twist at the end. Mostly the film grows more intriguing the more we get to see of Sampson. Hawkes is the only one in the film able to pull off the constant spout of silly speech. Every scene sees him interacting with a different female—in fact, every one of the five scenes is anchored on a male-female dynamic—and he seems to add respect to the table which makes all the difference in their interactions. The film’s second scene involves a doting and cooped up housewife, Janet, wallowing in the truth of her husband’s disaffection and infidelity, played superbly by Vail Bloom. That Bloom was directed to play this entire scene bottomless was at first humorous, and then simply suspiciously distasteful. Another scene follows Sampson’s ex-lover (Dichen Lachman) as she works both a boxing match and a drive-in theater in nothing but a bikini and heels, the camera staying just far enough away to allow her half-naked bottom to maintain focus.

While clearly first time director Dennis Hauck has a real love for the old-timey-ness possibility of film—in addition to being shot on 35mm the scene at the drive-in focuses on Sampson’s ex Jill’s ability to change a film reel—he hasn’t quite grasped the way to incorporate this passion into a film with modern flourishes. His writing reflects a childish amusement at his own clever wordplay, but seems to forget that the best noir had as much to do with silence as with dialogue.

This film proves several things: John Hawkes can elevate a film far beyond where it would be without him, females are usually the more intriguing elements of a noir so don’t abuse them, and witty dialogue does not an intelligent film make. For a first-time film, Hauck proves he has ambition aplenty, and if honed even more he is certainly someone to keep an eye on. Too Late is engaging and at times amusing in spite of itself, its whole being somewhat better than its parts. But there’s no denying why this film works in any small way, and his name is John Hawkes.

This is certainly not the first so-called movie rodeo for Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel Madame Bovary. The somewhat scandalous (at publication) realist novel has seen many film iterations. Sophie Barthes directs this latest attempt, written by first-timer Rose Barreneche (née Felipe Marino), and it’s rather a wonder that anyone felt that, one, what the world was lacking at the moment is another Madame Bovary adaptation, or two, that quite so much money and talent should be thrown into it. Considering the entire nature of the realism movement—gritty and hard perspectives on those in difficult or lowly situations, meant to show the truth of the human condition—this Madame Bovary is flat and unassertive.

By now Mia Wasikowska must be permanently corset-shaped. She has so many period-set films under her tiny belt. And more to come with this fall’s Crimson Peak . In Madame Bovary she is given some especially detailed, colorful, and decadent dresses to wear over those corsets, and the costuming of this otherwise droll film is quite possibly its most shining feature. But I digress, because despite the dated material they are given to work with, the performances of the film are quite strong. Wasikowska plays the Madame, Emma, who, at a young age, marries a country doctor, Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) who loves her in an earnest, boring sort of way. Book-read and sheltered away in a convent school for years, Emma, finds married life to be more provincial then she perhaps anticipated. The more she learns of her unambitious husband, the more she finds herself easily distracted by the young law student Leon Dupuis (Ezra Miller looking distractingly pretty) who has captured her attention with his romantic notions and traveled experiences. When he declares his attraction to her, she rejects him but immediately laments that he leaves town.

Determined not to spend the rest of her life passionless, Emma is much more eager to engage in scandal when her next suitor comes calling. The Marquis (Logan Marshall-Green) is rich and red-blooded. They begin a steamy affair as Emma grows bolder, and yet more prone to escapism. With the help of smooth salesman Monsieur Lheureux (Rhys Ifans practically stealing the show), Emma misplaces her ambition into worldly decadence, filling her home with fancy home furnishings her husband can never dream to afford. But being the pushover he is, Charles remains oblivious to his wife’s misdemeanors and their growing debt. Meanwhile, Emma’s life plays out like a sad version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She tries out Charles (clarly a Mama bear) and he’s too soft. So she moves on to The Marquis (a definitive Papa bear) and he’s much too hard, leaving her broken. Finally she returns to Leon (whose baby-face isn’t the only thing defining him as Baby bear) and he is just right. But this is a morality tale, and we all know things don’t work out for Goldilocks. She needs to respect other animal’s property, and Emma needs to stop living in the 21st century when she’s clearly stuck in the 19th.

As is the case with many of these 19th century realist novels, the translation to film can be a bit drab. Mostly because the sorrows of the poor characters of the 19th century, rather than evoke sympathy in their plight, are often portrayed so pathetically, it rather feels like watching The Real Housewives of 19th Century Rural France. And in that world, no one gets a happy ending. Like last year’s In Secret, the adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist novel, cheaters (as justified as they may be) just don’t win. I won’t ruin the ending, though there’s so many version of this story floating around I doubt there are many of you out there who can’t guess. Interestingly enough Anne Fontaine’s Gemma Bovery is out now as well and is garnering positive reviews.

Barthes is an interesting choice of director, her most notable feature before this being the Paul Giamatti film Cold Souls. Which provides some explanation for his small role in Madame Bovary. The cinematography is reminiscent of Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice, minus the lens flares and warmth. Plenty of widely framed shots of the dreary French country-side. Emma in her colorful clothing shines among the blandness, but her smile-less face rather reminds us at all times of the film’s tone. Most puzzling is that Barthes chose to film so straightforwardly. There is very little deviation from the original story and yet no real emphasis on the naturalist/realist style of the novel. It all plays out with a restless predictability.

Considering the caliber of the ingredients—A-list actors, tried and tested content, gorgeous costumery—Madame Bovary is unexceptional and bland. While female inequity and subjection is still a relevant issue, and one Barthes could have played with more, the portrayal of one woman’s sexual dalliances and shopping sprees is not exactly empowering or modern. Most consider Emma Bovary to be a romantic, caught up in her fantasies, but this rendition offers very little of that starry-eyed quality. Without any emotional connection, its hard to root for or cry for Emma Bovary. And when sex and shopping can’t even spark the slightest of interest for this female reviewer, it doesn’t bode well for extended audiences.

So the thing about the LA Film Festival is that making a recommendation list is pretty futile. So any other articles you’ve read telling you what you MUST see are bullsh***ing you. This is because the LA Film Festival is one of the few American film festivals that truly takes risks on its acceptances.

With films in a variety of categories, such as LA Muse (dedicated to Angelino inspired films), Zeitgiest (films that reflect the times), and Nightfall (for us late night horror fans), the offering is a mixed bag, and while there are a few festival-tested films (which is what their Buzz section is for), most films are 100% indie and 100% full of potential. We couldn’t have predicted last year how much we’d love Man From Reno, Runoff (which gets a release later this month), and The Mind of Mark DeFriest. Not to mention last year’s gala screenings of Snowpiercer (among our favorites over all last year) and Dear White People.

As if to prove just how unexpected they can be, the curators of LAFF waited until today—the day before the festival begins—to announce their closing night film. And turns out it isn’t a film at all. It’s a live read-through of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And guess who’s directing? Just guess. No, don’t. You won’t get it. It’s Eli Roth! Not exactly the dude who comes to mind when you think light-hearted high school humor. Maybe he’ll have a squirt gun of blood to spray at the actors?

As varied as the festival is, there are a few already-buzzed about films (and ones we’ve personally seen) that we can recommend right off the bat. Opening night’s Grandma is one of the best things we saw at Tribeca and has been discussed since Sundance. Lily Tomlin will also be receiving the Spirit of Independence Award so extra reason to catch that one. Additionally The Overnight, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and Chuck Norris vs. Communism are also playing and have been garnering buzz wherever they are screened.

As for potential diamonds in the rough, here are a few we can’t wait to check out, and don’t forget about all the fun free things to do like a screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit at Union Station on Friday!

Manson Family Vacation

Sunday, June 14 at 7:00 PM (Regal Cinemas LA Live 11)

These days you put the name “Duplass” in front of or after any film and us indie freaks perk up. The Duplass brothers have been giving us a lot of good stuff the past few years and here we have something new produced by and starring Jay Duplass. Directed by J. Davis, the film offers an intriguing premise. Duplass plays Nick Morgan, a man who has family, home, and career all going for him. His brother Conrad (Linas Phillips) has none of this. Conrad shows up for a visit and convinces Nick to partake in a road trip to visit the sites of the Manson Family murders. Sounds like equal parts unconventional and funny. We’re game.

Band of Robbers

Saturday, June 13 at 6:15 PM (Regal Cinemas LA Live 9)

Starring Kyle Gallner, Adam Nee, Matthew Gray Gubler, Hannibal Buress and mascarading as a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, this looks like a crazy bandit fantasy. I recommend simply watching the trailer (which has a killer soundtrack btw) below and then buying tickets. LAFF is the perfect place to embrace the weirdest things you can find. They almost always impress.

Too Late

Thursday, June 11 at 7:30 PM (Bing Theater at LACMA)

John Hawkes’s name has carried weight for us ever since Winter’s Bone—and probably should have sooner—so seeing his name among those listed for LAFF means we’re up for what’s next from this dedicated and intense actor. In this one he plays a private investigator named Mel Sampson, hired to track down a missing woman. Turns out she’s connected to his own past and the search takes him through southern California and among some eccentric personalities. Shot on 35mm, we look forward to some gritty California and some gritty John Hawkes.

Crumbs

Sunday, June 14 at 9:30 PM (Regal Cinemas LA Live 9)

As part of the dark and twisty Nightfall category at the festival, this one just reads as straight up enticing. Set in Ethiopia and directed by Spanish filmmaker Miguel Llansó, the basic premise is that an alien mothership has lied dormant for many years floating on the horizon. Then it comes to life and one man decides to make it his quest to board the ship. He crosses a post-apocalyptic landscape to get there as others barter with the aliens using pop cultural artifacts. Slap a big old question mark over my head and consider me intrigued.

The Final Girls

Tuesday, June 16 at 7:30 PM  (Regal Cinemas LA Live 1)

So if you happen to have written your college thesis on slasher films and the concept of the Final Girl, like a certain writer penning this article *ahem*, then the title alone will have wooed you in months ago when first you heard of this film when it premiered at SXSW. Not as in the know? No worries. In this film a girl, Max (Taissa Farmiga), gets sucked into an ’80s slasher flick with her friends. Her mother, a former scream queen actress, stars in the film, and Max has to use her knowledge of the genre to ensure she and her friends survive until the end and make their way back home. If the film simultaneously honors and pokes fun at this most revered of horror genres, then it’s already made my all-time favorite list.

Seoul Searching

Wednesday, June 17 at 7:30 PM (Regal Cinemas LA Live 1)

Another of the festival’s Gala screenings, this one is similar to The Final Girls in its ’80s genre homage. This time to the high school films of John Hughes. Based on filmmaker Benson Lee’s personal experiences, the film centers on a group of Korean high school misfits during the summer of 1986. Hailing from around the world, the teens are forced to go to a “propaganda” camp in Seoul over the summer in order to connect with what it means to be Korean. Filled with ’80s nostalgia and cultural hilarity, it looks like the situational comedy we never knew we were missing.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III

Saturday, June 13 at 10:20 PM (Regal Cinemas LA Live 8)

I’m tempted to say the title alone is weird enough to warrant a viewing. And as it falls under that never-know-what-your-gonna-get Nightfall category, it could be super bad. Or so bad it’s good. Or intentionally bad so as to be so good. Watch the trailer below, it reeks of satire but seems especially dedicated to mimicking those direct-to-VHS horror franchise films we sometimes got suckered into back in the day when a person could still rent a video. If you love (fake) blood and sheer tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness, this looks like great fun.