Will Jurassic World Dominion End The Beloved Movie Franchise? Here’s What One Producer Said
Halloween Ends’ Jamie Lee Curtis Thanks Horror Fans For Decades Of Support In Sweet Post
Fast And Furious’ Tyrese Gibson Responds After Jason Momoa Joins The ‘Family’
Following Ruptured Testicle Story, Johnny Knoxville Confirms Jackass Star Actually Left In An Ambulance
It’s Actually Been Cold In Florida (No Really), So Of Course Universal Orlando Is Brr-y Cheerful About
Top Gun: Maverick's Tom Cruise Shared New Footage With A Great NFL Tie-In
Lin-Manuel Miranda Explains Why He’s Turned Down The Opportunity To Host The Academy Awards
George Clooney On Reuniting With Julia Roberts For His First Rom-Com In Years
Disney World's Epcot Is Bringing Back A Pre-Covid Fan-Favorite, But With A Change
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The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window Review
Can a parody be too perfect? Not 'perfect' in the sense of a genuine cinematic masterpiece, but perfect in just how completely it mimics the very thing that it parodies so that it almost becomes indistinguishable from what it ridicules? If a film parodies tropes and clichés which have become tiresome and expected but does it incredibly well, is the parody itself banal? Where is this line drawn? These are a few of the questions a viewer might ask throughout the new Netflix series, The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window, or maybe even before they've finished reading the title.
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Alexandra Daddario Hides A Wardrobe Malfunction With A Well-Placed Heart
How Jennifer Lopez Is Allegedly Getting Along With Jennifer Garner Amid Romance With Ben Affleck
How Tessa Thompson Is Preparing For Her Return In Michael B. Jordan’s Creed 3
Kristen Stewart Speaks On The Status Of Her Wedding Plans With Dylan Meyer
Simon Pegg Offers Honest Update About The Star Trek Franchise
How George Clooney And Brad Pitt Are Helping To Keep The Movie Theater Industry Alive
Lori Harvey Explains The Key To Success In Her Relationship With Michael B. Jordan
The Fallout Review: Coming-of-Age in the Wake of Tragedy
In the United States, there is an unfortunate truth: the threat of school shootings within American schools is on the rise. In 2021 alone, there were forty-two acts of gun violence, which is the highest number recorded since 1999. The previous record was thirty shootings in one year, and it is estimated that 34,000 students, from kindergarten to high school, were exposed to gun violence. Survivors have used their grief as a force for change, but many students still struggle with the aftermath of what they lived through.
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An Ariana Grande Throwback At Epcot Goes Viral After TikTok User Tracks It Down
Chris Hemsworth Shares Shirtless Photo Of Himself Lifting Weights, And Holy Arms
The Fast And The Furious Series Might Be Adding A Massive DC Star As A Villain
Mighty Ducks Actor Shaun Weiss Celebrates 2 Years Sober With Hopeful Post
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Remember Tom Cruise's Space Movie? We Finally Have Some New Details
Why Ron Perlman Is Willing To Do Hellboy 3 Despite Being '71 F-ing Years Old'
Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Is Prepping For Launch, Here’s Our First Look At The Crew
Epic Universe Finally Has An Opening Date And There’s More Good Universal Orlando News
Johnny Depp Shifts Into Making Art, Shares ‘Never Fear Truth’ Design
Macaulay Culkin And Brenda Song Engaged After Celebrating Baby Son
Of Course, A Disgruntled Disney World Guest’s Comments Went Viral After Disney World Had One Of Its Busiest Days In Months
25 Years Into Their Marriage, Hugh Jackman Still Has Nothing But Praise For His Wife
Mortal Kombat 2 Just Took A Big Step Forward
Dakota Johnson Jokes About Making Out With ‘A Lot Of Women’ To Prep For New Movie
Disney Responds To Peter Dinklage's Concerns About The Snow White Remake
Halloween Ends' Jamie Lee Curtis Reveals First Look At Laurie For The Threequel
Denzel Washington Was Honest With His Kids About the Business Of Hollywood, But It Sounds Like It Didn’t Matter
Jackass Forever’s Steve-O Recalls His Worst Injuries From The Franchise
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Sebastian Stan Shows Off A Terrifying Side In The Dark, Disturbing Sundance Horror Fresh
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‘Fargo’ Part 2: Franchise Offers Something Tarantino Never Could
The Coen brothers’ 1996 film “Fargo” is a cinematic original.
Surely, it derives certain tropes the brothers had worked out over the course of their learning curve—from “Blood Simple” (1984)—through gems like “Raising Arizona” (1987), “Miller’s Crossing” (1990), “Barton Fink” (1991) and “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994).
In fact, everything present in “Fargo” can be traced back to their previous films. And everything the Coen brothers have created has been founded upon and been a development of an undeniable film signature developed and embellished ever since.
If they were both diagnosed with a terminal illness, their coda could be, from “No Country for Old Men:
“I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘O.K., I’ll be part of this world.’”
That’s the end of this particular explanation. You have to be willing to put your soul at hazard. And that’s courtesy of author Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the book upon which “Old Men” is based.
Everything else belongs to Ethan and Joel Coen.
RELATED: Why ‘Fargo’ Franchise Is Both Necessary and Rare
The FX television series “Fargo” (which the brothers co-executive produce) has mined the Coen’s oeuvre adroitly—alternately capitalizing on its bleak landscapes and quirky humor while deepening the moral depths explored within:
- Good and evil
- Absurdity and meaning
- Justice and mercy
- Individual free will and Divine Providence
Seasons 1 & 2 recreate the kind of humor that remains a Coen imprint. The comedy leavens the Tarantino-esque grotesquery with a down-home humor without the meanness of their contemporary.
The “Pulp Fiction” auteur’s take on reality has lacked the hope the Coens’ Jewish faith seems to have served as grounds for something more than the gallows humor Tarantino has never risen above.
RELATED: Why We Need to See Tarantino’s ‘Star Trek’ Vision
Where the Coens reserve the right to include miracles in a universe unexplainable except by the meaning of human life; Tarantino offers the striving toward meaning that humans ever desire in a universe only too willing to clap shut upon their hopes.
Both universes offer opportunities for meaning and hope—but while the Coens leave a door open, Tarantino always slams it shut.
The difference in satisfaction here is important.
Tarantino’s world often ends in Hell. The Coen brothers’, while it is never quite definitive—which is telling—always leaves hope.
One thereby is tragic, the other is comic.
“Fargo” seasons 3 and 4 deliver admirably in the Coen universe. Season 3 continues what seems stunt casting—but offers such a quirky and dirty story and such perfect performances that the odd accents and familiar faces are soon forgotten.
The virtue of Season 3 (as a counterpart to FX’s Season’s 1 & 2) is its return to the innocence of the original film. It offers seemingly parallel stories –tainted and untainted—in a connected universe in which bumbling men (Ewan McGregor’s Ray/Emmit Stussy) are pitted against a competent and good woman (Carrie Coon’s Gloria Burgle).
It recalls the pitch between Marge Gunderson (Francis McDormand) and Jerry Lundergaard (Willaim H. Macy), whose world is sucked into the underworld by his own poor choices, befouling every wish for the good life he might ever have conceived.
And while it includes a connection to an underworld more evil and big than anything the principles might imagine (and so beautifully portrayed by its principle devil, V.M. Vargis (David Wheeler/Thewlis), it never succumbs and, by the end, might even endure against it.
RELATED: ‘Fargo’ Cop Proves Nice Guys Still Matter
To be sure, the elements of absurdity and miracle are developed and deepened in Seasons 3 & 4—including a visit to “The Big Lebowski’s” Bowling Alley (in Season 3) including a Jewish Angel-like spirit dispelling wisdom from past and future.
Along with the repetition of plot devices from the original (a suspect apprehended fleeing through the window of a seedy motel and a major character killed by accident with a shard of glass—perhaps a feint to Frear’s “The Grifters.”
Both seasons parody their originals and deepen our thinking about the universe they continue to explore.
Season 4, in a brilliant turn starring Chris Rock (as Loy Cannon) is both darker and deeper. The bleak winter landscape is maintained, but the universe turns from white to brown.
Not only because the African-American crime syndicate comes into competition with the Italian model, but because the color scheme cinematographically matches the change in tone.
Season 4 takes place inside rather than outside, depositing the viewer back to the 1950s and offers a deep backstory to the Fargo/Kansas City connection established in Season 2.
Only one character, Wes Wrench (Russell Harvard) survives through Seasons 1, 2, and 3 and establishes securely that the Coens insist upon some elemental character to ensure that some semblance of justice prevails, in a Faulknerian sense, across the bleak landscape they have established.
And while every film and season has represented some redeeming character from almost every race represented, Season 4 seems to have it in for the Italians—Machiavels all, who get their just desserts—by accident or by design.
RELATED: How ‘Barton Fink’ Let the Coen Brothers Push Us to the Brink
In the end, “Fargo” has always explored the deep Augustinian question of the relationship between God’s Providence and individual free will. While Augustine’s Autobiography and City of God are explicit explorations of this great question, “Fargo” has been the laymen’s questioning, in light of the mendacity of human behavior along with the beauty (well, not enough beauty) of existence.
What does it all mean?
We are born and we die. In between, we make a series of choices, and these choices have consequences that knit into our experience the threads that constitute our lives.
At that same time, our choices affect others’ lives and their experiences are lightened, enlightened, or stained by our decisions.
“Fargo” (whether the original film or the series) suggests that we are both in control and not in complete control of those choices. Tornadoes rage. Earthquakes move the earth. Random characters walk into and out of our lives—disturbing the rolls of our die, or curving the ‘luck’ in our direction.
Sometimes the consequences of our choices mean everything. Sometimes a Rabbi (the Coens’ “A Serious Man”) says rightly, “Look at the parking lot…”
In other words, it means something, it means nothing. That’s the Jewish way. Or, it means everything.
In Season 3, the character V.M. Varga says, “The problem with the world is not evil; it is good.” This is the key to the Coen brothers’ world. And the FX series has been true to that world.
It is a universe in which the absurd is allowed because the meaningful is the basis; it is a universe in which tragedy relies upon comedy, because the most meaningful things are not murders in graveyards but lasagnas in kitchens.
We, as humans, laugh and cry spontaneously, because a sense of proportion in all things is an instinct, not a learned thing. Every moment of right in “Fargo” is not learned, it is innate. Every moment of evil is taught. And every moment of good is a choice and a grace.
Gregory Borse teaches film appreciation, history & development, philosophy, literary theory and a variety of literatures on a small campus in a large university system in the South. His short story “Joyellen” was selected as an online exclusive for West Trade Review’s Summer 2021 issue. He has published or presented in the past on Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Stephen Frear’s “The Grifters” and seminal horror films ranging from “Nosferatu” to “Halloween,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Strangers,” among others.
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Dwayne Johnson Goes Into Detail About All His Major Injuries And ‘Finding Greatness’ Despite Them
Tron: Legacy Alum Garrett Hedlund Arrested For Public Intoxication Following Breakup With Emma Roberts
No Big Deal, Just Twilight’s Kristen Stewart And PLL’s Ashley Benson Hanging Out At Disneyland In Matching Sweatshirts
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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Rep Provides Update After The Star Is Involved In Multi-Car Accident
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Go Ahead And Get Pumped, Because There’s Finally Forward Movement On Jason Statham’s The Meg 2
‘The Tiger Rising’ Roars When It Should
Disney’s “Old Yeller” may be a children’s film, but it delivers a sobering lecture on the circle of life.
That 1957 film’s finale taught children hard truths in ways they could process given their brain development.
Something similar takes place during “The Tiger Rising.”
The film, based on the 2001 children’s book of the same name, examines death, divorce and bullying without compromise. The actors, especially Queen Latifah, ensure the darker themes are handled with the finesse such a story demands.
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Young Rob Horton (Christian Convery) is having a hard time of it as the story opens. His mother (Katharine McPhee) died a short while ago, leaving his overwhelmed father (Sam Trammell) to care for him. His fellow school mates bully him incessantly, and a nagging skin rash has him staying home lest others pick up the condition.
It’s not contagious, but tell that to the unctuous principal.
Enter Sistine (Madalen Mills, radiant), a spark plug of a child who transfers to Rob’s school. She’s got her own baggage, but she bonds with Rob after seeing his remarkable wood sculptures. Together, they fend off their mutual foes while trying to figure out what to do with another new addition to the neighborhood.
A caged tiger owned by a cranky mogul (Dennis Quaid) is in walking distance of Rob’s motel home.
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“The Tiger Rising” blends magic realism with the indignities too many children endure. Poor Rob can’t even properly grieve for his mother, and now he’s asked to stare down bullies lurking around every corner.
Mills gets the tougher role here, the sassy friend who struts around as if impervious to life’s slings and arrows. A lesser child star would have gotten lost in that pose.
Mills finds the soulful center of her character.
A cynic will see Latifah’s character, the seen-it-all motel maid, as a spin on the “Magic Negro” trope. And, to be fair, she could use a flaw to make her character pop. Still, the rapper-turned-actress grounds the story in a vital way, even if the script finds her homilies a tad too on the nose.
Quaid is having a hoot as the villain, and it’s hardly his fault some plot developments tied to his character strain credulity. It’s better just to swallow the imperfections and see where these children will go next.
The film’s third act builds, and builds, but the resolution is both too tough for even a story like this while delivering an incongruent resolution. Still, we’re invested in these rough and tumble kids, eager to see how they’ll turn their lives around.
HiT or Miss: “The Tiger Rising” asks plenty of its young audience, knowing children are capable of processing complicated stories to better grasp the world around them.
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Rebecca Ferguson Explains How Dune Was A Big Family (Though She’s Friendly With M:I Co-Star Tom Cruise)
Disney’s Hollywood Studios' Toy Story Land Will Finally Fix Its Biggest Problems Later This Year
Parasite Director Bong Joon-ho Has Found His Next Movie, And The Batman's Robert Pattinson Might Be Involved
Redeeming Love Review: Choosing Love in the Face of Hardship
Romantic period dramas will always be a staple in the movie world, and 2022 starts with an adaptation of Francine Rivers’ best-selling 1991 novel Redeeming Love. The 1850s Gold Rush in California, in the dusty deserts of the state, seems like the perfect setting to tell a story of redemption and glory. But it doesn’t unfold in the way audiences familiar with these narratives may expect. The heroine isn’t looking for gold nor a shot of fame in the Wild West. The setting is confined to the small world and bedroom she lives in the Palace. When a man spots her outside one day and decides that she’ll be the woman he marries, her entire world changes.
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Tyler Perry Explains Why He’s Reviving Madea For Another Movie
Avatar 2 And Aquaman 2 Share A Release Date. Of Course, Twitter Has Thoughts About Which Movie They’re More Excited About
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Jamie Dornan Admits In Early Hollywood Days He Once Lived With Robert Pattinson And Some Other Famous Superheroes
Watch Disneyland's Spider-Man Animatronic Hilariously Crash In Viral TikTok Creation
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The King's Daughter Review: Mermaid Fairy Tale Lacks Enchantment
Pierce Brosnan’s regal peacock strut can’t save a lackluster fairy tale. The King’s Daughter is a long-shelved Renaissance fantasy resplendent with mermaids, palace intrigue, and a spirited heroine. Adapted from the award-winning novel “The Moon and the Sun” by Vonda N. McIntyre, the film fails to enchant on any level. It’s a curious disappointment because some pieces do work. The cast, production design, and visual effects are decent; but the narrative flounders with a thoroughly uninspiring delivery.
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As Regé-Jean Page Continues To Dominate The 007 Odds, Another Contender's Chances Are Getting A Surprising Boost
Expendables 4 Star Explains What It’s Like To Work With Action Legends Like Sylvester Stallone
Belle Review: An Anime Beauty With Bullying Beasts
Animation is often at its best when delivering what can only be possible within its medium, creating worlds and images which are otherwise unthinkable in live-action films or literature. From the dancing brooms of Fantasia to the eyeballed lumps of adorable coal in Spirited Away, animation has the ability to express a creative vision with more imagination than almost anything else. Paradoxically, this is what makes Mamoru Hosoda's new film Belle be simultaneously wonderful and, in some minor ways, a missed opportunity.
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Succession Star Calls Johnny Depp 'Overrated' While Talking Role He Could Have Taken In Pirates Of The Caribbean
The Secret Drew Barrymore Shared With Scream’s Courteney Cox That Was Causing Her To Have ‘A Nervous Breakdown’
Two Reasons Why The Matrix Resurrections Bombed In China
The Last Thing Mary Saw Review: Shudder's New Release Has the Fear of God
A young woman is tied to a chair by candlelight, blood streaming down beneath a blindfold wrapped tightly around her face. She recites the Lord's Prayer while men point rifles at her head and wait for her to stumble on the words, but she makes no mistakes; the accused woman, witch or murderer, knows her Bible.
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Denzel Washington Recalls What It Was Like To Watch His Son In Tenet At Christopher Nolan's House
Matt Damon And Ben Affleck Reveal It Was Kevin Smith Who Saved Good Will Hunting
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Will Smith Reveals The One Career Doubt He Had Ahead Of King Richard’s Release
Why ‘Fargo’ Franchise Is Both Necessary and Rare
The 1996 film “Fargo” captured something too often missing from American film culture—a portrait of what flyover country actually looks like and how it operates.
It lovingly presents normal people as they encounter (maybe) evil but certainly bad decisions and stupid mistakes. It traffics in the tropes and pitfalls of pursuing the American Dream in what became, 20 years later, recognizably Trump’s America.
Like a William Faulkner short story, the film threads the needle along a border hem between affection and ridicule—and yet stays just this side of rejecting the idea of hope.
Marge Gundersen (Frances McDormand, “Raising Arizona“) and her husband (the rightly named ‘Norm’), represent normal people who want to live normal lives. They don’t understand against whom they find themselves in competition for the “American Dream.”
It’s not that they are stupid—the Gundersens—it’s that the forces they fight are stupid and evil. And so, as they might say in Minnesota, it ends up being a kind of “that’s why things turn out the way they turn out, kind of deal.”
In the film “Fargo” the forces of good win; and it almost looks as if they do so by accident. But, upon closer examination, that is not the case.
Marge’s investigation is straightforward and honest. She wins every competition she finds herself in not only because she refuses to lie, but because the power of evil in the world is impervious to that honesty.
The scene in which she confronts one of the minor players, Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis), reveals a kind of moral superiority that the underworld with whom she competes misunderstands and underestimates. In the end, Marge triumphs not from luck but through wit and honest doggedness.
Such is a theme in many of the Coen Brother’s projects. Every film they make is about a choice or a series of choices—and the effects those choices have and the ripples they cause outside their own neighborhoods.
The Coens are, ultimately, interested in relationships between human free will and Divine Providence and Justice. Their vision is perhaps deeply Jewish (as in “A Serious Man”) or Christian and Pagan and Secularist (“No Country for Old Men”).
RELATED: ‘Fargo’ Proves Nice Guys Still Matter
Yet, unlike many of their generational counterparts in film and popular culture, the Coens prove relentlessly optimistic about the human condition. And this explains their dark comic undercurrents—which, in the end, even when their projects lead to tragedy and absurdity, underscore a Purgatorial vision of the human story—it’s comic, not tragic.
For all the bloody violence and accidental comedy in their films and shows, the Coens leave room not merely for affection for the human condition but for miracles—those unexplained “convergences” (as one character calls them In the “Fargo” FX series) that speaks to a larger meaning to everything that resides outside the human experience and understanding.
What makes the “Fargo” FX series so satisfying is the loyalty paid by the writers and directors to the tone and texture of the original film.
In a lesser series, the casting would seem stunted—but in “Fargo,” the casting is pitch perfect and spot on—as are the performances, particularly those of Billy Bob Thornton (Lorne Malvo) and Martin Freeman (Lester Nygaard) in Season 1 and Jean Smart (Floyd Gerhardt) and Ted Danson (Sheriff Hank Larsson) in Season 2.
Even the casting of Key and Peele as non-comic and bumbling FBI agents (late in Season 1) and Gary Valentine (from “The King of Queens”), and Nick Offerman (as the hilariously named attorney Karl Weathers) connect, largely because their performances feels natural.
“Fargo,” from its beginning was about the underside of the compact between man and God in the Old and New Testaments as expressed in the three covenants.
- The promise in the Garden of Eden and how we somehow screwed it up.
- The failure at Babel (the second Fall) when we were punished for failing to ‘go forth and multiply and subdue’ the world, resulting in the Great Flood.
- The Coming of Christ Himself to fix things and die to do it, rise, and resurrect.
The universe operates in a world in which salvation is both only possible and impossible because the arbiters of that universe insist upon being their own gods. Except the ones that don’t.
The ones that don’t, the Coens seem strangely to not merely admire; they like.
There’s something to be said for a universe that recognizes that the evil we see in the world can itself only be evil if and only if Good is not only good, but True. It’s the message the Coen brothers have been sharing the whole time.
Gregory Borse teaches film appreciation, history & development, philosophy, literary theory and a variety of literatures on a small campus in a large university system in the South. His short story “Joyellen” was selected as an online exclusive for West Trade Review’s Summer 2021 issue. He has published or presented in the past on Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Stephen Frear’s “The Grifters” and seminal horror films ranging from “Nosferatu” to “Halloween,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Strangers,” among others.
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How Brian Austin Green Reportedly Feels About Megan Fox's Engagement To Machine Gun Kelly
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‘Ray Donovan: The Movie’ Wraps Series, Leaves Us Unsatisfied
Be careful what you wish for …
Fans revolted when Showtime abruptly canceled “Ray Donovan” following its seventh season two years ago. What happened to Mickey, Jon Voight’s magnificently warped father figure, who finally snagged a fortune all his own?
How would Daryll (Pooch Hall) escape the ramifications from his bloody actions?
Most importantly, why would Showtime knee cap a series that still packed a wallop?
The pay network relented, serving up a “Ray Donovan” feature meant to tie up some loose ends. It does that, all right, but the finale lacks the sizzle, and emotional scope, of the show’s best episodes.
Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) looks older, and haggard, as the story opens. Can you blame him? His father is on the run, again, which means Mickey still could lure his sons back into his next criminal scheme.
His daughter, Bridget (Kerris Dorsey), is now a widow thanks to a shootout that wrapped the previous season.
Ray still has brothers Terry (Eddie Marsan), Bunchy (Dash Mihok) and Daryll by his side. Only Bridget grasps the tragedy of her husband’s passing and what it says about the Donovans.
That narrative thread matters, but it’s eclipsed by generic “Ray Donovan” beats that feel like outtakes from previous seasons. Mickey once more connects with an old comrade. Ray whips out his favorite weapon, a Louisville slugger, to smack some deserving creeps around.
And Bunchy, poor, hapless Bunchy, seems destined for more sadness ahead.
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Anyone new to the series or its characters will be lost from the opening scene. This is for “Ray Donovan” devotees only, and that’s perfectly fine … and its downfall.
If you’ve seen some of the show’s best moments you’ll realize nothing remotely powerful plays out here.
“Ray Donovan,” like most modern shows, looks like something you’d see in a movie theater. That visual snap continues, but it can’t distract from the paucity of killer scenes. We need more of Ray and Mickey, Ray and Terry or just Mickey confronting the totality of his crimes.
Even the return of Alan Alda as Ray’s therapist feels undercooked.
The whole endeavor is both rushed and sluggish, with no new revelations beyond more unnecessary flashbacks. It doesn’t help that the actor chosen to play a young Ray (Chris Gray) looks nothing like Schreiber.
Nothing.
We already know why Ray and the Donovans are who they are. We don’t need even more biographical back stories to explain the rest to us. It’s more “Hannibal Rising” or Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” than “Bates Motel.”
“Ray Donovan” does suggest how some characters will move forward. Longtime fans will find solace in that, but the moments don’t justify a film that would rank as a lesser show episode, at best.
HiT or Miss: “Ray Donovan” will endure as one of the era’s most relentlessly addictive shows. The series finale, on the other hand, can’t summon a fraction of its greatness.
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Cast Member Claims Disney World Is Inflating Wait Times, But Not For The Reason Parkgoers Think
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‘Scream’ 2022: Let’s Do the Time Warp … Again
The new “Scream” has the same title as the original 1996 Wes Craven horror classic but is actually the fifth entry in the series.
This being a franchise that is famous for reflexive self-awareness, to the point where the characters actively discuss the film they’re in, we even get to hear an onscreen explanation why this film is simply called “Scream” and not the obvious “Scream 5: The Awakening” or “Scream Forever.”
Since the movie supposedly justifies its potentially confusing title, I’ll just refer to it as “Scream” 2022. It’s worth noting that this enjoyable but unnecessary sequel openly discusses everything that is wrong with it, as though the screenwriters were taking a preemptive strike against critics.
It would have been better if, rather than making excuses for everything here that is tired and rote, the film had, you know, just eliminated all the stale elements and been so much wilder.
It stars Melissa Barrera (of “In the Heights”) as Sam Carpenter, whose traumatic childhood is revisited upon learning her younger sister has been stabbed multiple times. Considering that the victim lives in Woodsboro and the crime was committed by someone wearing a “Ghostface” mask and costume, it’s clear the events of the prior movies (and the movies-within-the-movies, deemed the “Stab” series) are about to reoccur.
The only way to face the masked enemy is to follow The Rules of surviving a horror film (which are updated to mention the contemporary likes of “The Babadook” and “Hereditary”) and to reunite the surviving cast members of the first film.
Since we lost Wes Craven in 2015, the filmmakers are now Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the team who made the not-great cult favorite “Ready Or Not” (2019). The screenplay was co-authored by Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt, the latter writer who adapted “Zodiac” for David Fincher, though his work here sometimes approaches his see-how-clever-I-am C-level “Basic” (2003).
While there are sequences here that work well, this is mostly a collection of teen slasher movie greatest hits.
Scream, 2022: Poster variants created by Creepy Duck Design. pic.twitter.com/BS6w1QgkNA
— Fear Catalogue (@FearCatalogue) January 13, 2022
The results may be occasionally surprising and shockingly violent, I wish it were more of the former and less of the latter, as it could have used a lot more unexpected plot turns. By the time we get to the third act, there’s too much of “The Talking Killer” cliché, as characters stand around and discuss their plot motivations.
Here’s the thing that “Scream” 2022 doesn’t quite get: there’s a big difference between a movie that is truly clever, versus a movie like this, which can’t stop talking about how clever it is. Referencing all the forced tropes, expected meta commentary and constant yammering about franchise requirements doesn’t give the movie a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Some of the self-aware chatter is funny, but much of it is as tired as anything in “The Matrix Resurrections.”
The tributes to the late Wes Craven are nice, until they get too on the nose. Having the film end with “For Wes” is a sweet touch but having a character who is killed, whose name is Wes, given a toast where a roomful of teens toast “To Wes,” is too much. Likewise, the heavy-handed in-jokes (Hey, that’s Elm St.! Hey, that kid’s last name is Carpenter!).
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Some of the performances from the younger cast are weak, though leave it to David Arquette to walk away with this one. Courtney Cox has some emotionally charged moments, but it feels like the movie needed more of this.
As for Neve Campbell, she struts through this like the genre royalty that she is, as the characters fawn over here as much as anyone in the audience likely will. The reunion of the first “Scream” cast is given slightly more to do than the returning cast members in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”
If “Scream” 2022 belongs in any category, is simply Nostalgia, as it follows the pattern of the first film and has similar characters and events, that mirror what has already happened in earlier installments.
Perhaps we’re supposed to just accept this, since a character literally gives a living room speech about exactly the kind of fan-baiting reboot effort this is. Being meta shouldn’t mean discussing the things that the movie you’re watching shouldn’t be permitted to get away with.
I liked a lot of “Scream” 2022 but this franchise peaked after one movie. There are scenes that excite, like the second act showdown in a hospital, the film’s strongest set piece. I’m unsure if the film’s retro approach to unleash buckets of fake blood and embrace the genre’s tendency for gore was a wise approach.
A number of on-screen murders make me flinch, though that’s not the same as being scary. There’s a lot of stabby-stabby, slicey-dicey (or, as the late, great movie Denver movie critic Reggie McDaniel used to say, “Slasher Basher!”) but it all feels uneven and falls short of a home run.
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I greatly prefer “Scream 2” (1997) over this, even if that film fell apart in the end. “Scream 3” (2000) was the series low point, though “Scream 4,” following a brilliant pre-title sequence, also wallowed in routine, feeling equally worn out and forced.
The original, however, still hits hard and succeeds as both an aggressive teen horror film and a violent comedy about horror films.
Wes Craven’s “Scream” (1996) begins with only the opening title and immediately into the famous prolog, in which Drew Barrymore’s Casey is terrorized by a “wrong number” who won’t leave her alone.
Watching it today, removed from dozens of parodies and how iconic the sequence is, its startling to see how powerful it is. Barrymore is playing it real, a nice young girl who is scared mercilessly, as even the self-reflexive touches of humor don’t soften how sadistic the set piece is and how nasty the final reveal is.
Craven harkens back to his early disreputable cult classics. It’s so good, in fact, that “Scream” never tops its harrowing opening, one of Craven’s best directed and still-most shocking sequences.
While not every character stands out, the pacing is tight, and the performances form the ensemble cast are all sharp. “Scream” is smart enough to know that Skeet Ulrich not only resembles Johnny Depp but that he should even enter the movie like Johnny Depp did in “A Nightmare on Elm St.”
Craven’s own cameo is inspired and wisely goes by too fast to fully call attention to itself. Even the soundtrack is well crafted – use of “Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave and the Seeds is inspired.
Playing franchise favorite Sidney Prescott, Neve Campbell carries it, but Courtney Cox’s performance, both nasty and feisty, is what grounds it. Henry Winkler slyly plays the high school principal, Rose McGowan, decades before she energized the #metoo movement, is a natural scene stealer.
This was made back when even Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy’s over-acting was put to good use.
Kevin Williamson’s screenplay creates scores of red herrings and opportunities for the actors to look guilty enough to instill doubt. It’s a good mystery, with even the subplot involving Cotton Weary (an early turn from Liev Schreiber) adding weight to Prescott’s personal baggage.
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It acknowledged the approaching millennium and the fears of uncertainty it exuded. Cox’s Gail Weathers is on “Top Story,” back when “Hard Copy” and “A Current Affair” were pre-Internet sources of gossip-infused “news” sources.
“Scream” created a series of self-satisfied horror films that tripped over themselves trying to be “The Next Scream,” as well as retro-slasher films that didn’t care whatsoever that they were rehashing stale material (I’m looking at you “I Know What You did last Summer”).
Then there’s the “Scary Movie” parody sequels (from the same studio, no less), the MTV series (in its third season) and now this reboot. It also inspired the obnoxious trend of teen horror films having its actors pictured on the poster, all standing next to one another, overstuffing the one-sheet long before Marvel overplayed this practice much later.
Williamson makes some missteps: McGowan’s final scene is degrading, especially for a film that aims to subvert sexism and misogyny in horror films. The inclusion of the Richard Gere line was tacky in 1996 and still lands with a thud. “Scream” is overwritten, with too much running around in the third act, when it would have been wise to get to the final confrontation sooner.
Once we get a clear look at the Ghost Face mask, the masked killer is nowhere near as scary as he is over the phone (major credit goes to Roger Jackson for his vocal performance).
To Williamson’s credit, the Leopold and Loeb-inspired reveal is unsettling, with the multiple stabbings remarkably brutal. Craven was clearly removed from the uncharacteristic, woefully uneven but fascinating “Vampire in Brooklyn” (1995) when he bounced back with this.
Prescott is dealing with sexual pressure from her boyfriend and the shame of her mother being accused of having multiple lovers before she was brutally murdered. Some of this comes full circle into the final catharsis but, by the final moments, the film itself becomes too jokey for a real character arch to stick (the sequels would tackle Sidney’s ongoing narrative, though half-heartedly, as she’s firmly the franchise Scream Queen). Still, the comedy and horror mostly work, with the oft-quoted scene of Jamie Kennedy’s video store clerk egghead going over “The Rules” still funny.
“Scream,” rather bizarrely, opened on Christmas Day 1996 and had a muted first weekend. Surprisingly, word of mouth kicked in, it hung around the box office top ten for weeks and was still playing in most theaters by the following summer.
In fact, one of the final lines of “Scream” 2022 has a reporter noting that the events we’ve just witnessed mirrored what occurred nearly 25-years ago to the day. We’ve come full circle and, five movies in, this franchise is still long in the tooth and offers little beyond restating what was already said the first time, but there’s (very) bloody fun to be had.
For those keeping a (body)count, here’s my rating of the series, on a scale of 1-5 stars:
- Scream (1996) Three Stars
- Scream 2 (1997) Three Stars
- Scream 3 (2000) One and a Half Stars
- Scream 4 (2011) Two Stars
- Scream (2022) Two and a Half Stars
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‘Tragedy of Macbeth’ Delivers (Over and Over Again)
Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is the first film he hasn’t directed with his equally celebrated brother, Ethan Coen.
Rather than feeling like a half a movie from only one of the most distinct and consistently brilliant filmmaking teams in America, Joel Coen’s film is a work of genius.
The story remains as William Shakespeare intended; It’s how the story is told that feels entirely new.
Denzel Washington plays Macbeth as a servant to King Duncan (played by Brendan Gleason) and tires of being overlooked. The prophecy of three witches (all played by Kathryn Hunter) reveals Macbeth to gain the throne. Through the counsel of Lady Macbeth (played by Frances McDormand) and a willingness to obtain power through murder most foul, Macbeth’s moral compromise sets in motion an ascendence in royalty, at the cost of his soul.
Visually, this resembles an early Orson Welles film or a work of German expressionism (think Fritz Lang’s “M.” or Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”). There’s a feeling of discovery to every scene, as even the scene transitions (artful, clever fades that rearrange the shape of the setting but, like great stage direction, convey the stark, nightmarish perspective of Macbeth’s mind) are amazing.
Washington doesn’t overplay or become demonstrative, in what could have simply become a stage performance. In fact, he keeps his facial reactions neutral for the first act and allows the words to have their power. His recitations are straight forward and unforced.
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Washington’s passion for theater, which he often returns to in between film roles, is extended into his work here.
McDormand doesn’t play Lady Macbeth as expected, as there is an understated quality to the kind of opportunist she portrays. It’s a decision that doesn’t always connect, though, like her co-star, McDormand is visibly avoiding the temptation to go over the top and keep her work at a steady tempo.
At least Washington and McDormand have solid chemistry and find the desperation in their roles. To say the least, the film lives up to the promise of seeing two awe inspiring Oscar winners give depth and great feeling to their legendary characters.
Inside Joel Coen’s solo venture, after a career co-directing with his brother Ethan, to film Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. https://t.co/DuiuOdCUu2
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 7, 2022
Gleason is so terrific here, giving such fire to his recitations and it’s fun to watch Stephen Root somehow fully embody his one-scene part but also give the kind of offbeat character turn you’d expect in a film directed by a Coen brother.
Then there’s Hunter, who makes The Witch a scary, intimidating presence and portrays multiple roles as well; it’s a tour de force but so clever a ruse, I had to have her additional roles pointed out to me.
Among the many legendary lines that spring up: “Is this a dagger I see before me?”, “Unsex me,” “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” “Out damned spot,” and “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
The costumes, sets, cinematography, sound and Carter Burwell’s thrilling score are all awards worthy.
The thundering drops of water are a reminder of the final image in “Blood Simple” (1985), Coen’s debut film, and it’s a perfect callback here. Even without his brother Ethan, Joel Coen is firing on all cylinders.
For the uninitiated or casual viewer, it will be a lot to absorb. I recommend a primer, whether a synopsis of Shakespeare’s play or even a revisit of the well-executed Michael Fassbender/ Marion Cotillard version from 2015.
Shakespearean purists will undoubtedly debate whether this is among the definitive versions of the play, though Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” remains that way for me. In terms of style, boldness and the achievement of ambition all around, Coen’s film is comparable.
While too many films are ready made for viewing on a laptop, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is profoundly and defiantly cinematic, naturally integrating the theatrical and reshaping a classic, bloody tale with a newfound life.
The presence of sparrows suggests the evil and madness that is swirling around the characters, and Shakespeare’s cautionary tale has been recalibrated by Coen to resemble a gorgeous nightmare. This isn’t “concept Shakespeare” or a gimmicky, self-consciously artsy experiment but a thoughtfully constructed vision.
Simply put, it’s awesome.
Five Stars
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Scream Review (Spoiler-Free): A Fan Service Slasher Buffet Devoid Of Scares
The Ghostface killer returns in a self-deprecating, fan service buffet of a slasher sequel that’s woefully short on scares. Scream's twenty-fifth-anniversary relaunch will have audiences laughing out loud as opposed to cowering in terror. The original cast returns as supporting players to a new group of smarmy teen victims. The film pokes fun at horror genre tropes while referencing itself as a reaction to the “Stab” franchise, which was based on the Woodsboro murders. The tongue-in-cheek approach works to a point before becoming outright silly. Scream will satisfy bloodlust with graphic and vicious knife attacks.
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‘The 355’ Can’t Get Anything Right
Simon Kinberg’s “The 355” opens with a logo for Freckle Films, the production company of its star, Jessica Chastain, and SKGENRE, which is the filmmaker’s own company and initials.
It’s a quick reminder that Kinberg and Chastain are reuniting here for the first time since his prior film and directorial debut, “X-Men: Dark Phoenix.” For some, this would present a warning, though I approached optimistically, as I’m one of possibly four people on planet Earth who really liked that film.
After a few minutes of their new film, it’s clear that this is no “X-Men: Dark Phoenix,” which was uneven and had a troubled production history but emerged a potent, thematically rich and enthralling work. “The 355,” on the other hand, is a total fiasco.
We begin with what appears to be a Colombian drug deal, but is actually a set up for the film’s McGuffin, a drive that could cancel electricity, cause planes to come crashing down and, scariest of all, cause your cell phone to not work (Noooo! Start panicking, everyone!).
Edgar Ramirez appears as the soldier who obtains the device and, right away, we can see we’re in for a very long two hours: this is visually bland, sloppily edited, poorly written and never exciting.
Even the presence of Ramirez brings a harbinger of doom, as the once promising star of “Carlos” is now stuck in career limbo, doing films like the “Point Break” remake and this.
We meet Chastain’s agent Mace, who is teamed with her colleague and best friend with benefits, played by the wooden Sebastian Stan, to steal the device, which leads to the first of many ineptly staged chase sequences, unexciting stunts and reminders that we could be watching good movies, with the words “Mission: Impossible,” in the title.
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The red flags never cease, as an introduction to Lupita Nyongo’s techno savvy sidekick is one pointless scene needlessly stretched into two (it’s disheartening to see the brilliant lead of Jordan Peele’s “Us” demoted to being Ving Rhames opposite Chastain’s Ethan Hunt wannabe).
Eventually, Diane Kruger’s vicious agent and Penelope Cruz’s agency psychiatrist join together with Chastain, because, well, it’s on the movie’s poster.
A scene of the four, chemistry-free leads in a bar, exchanging stories and laughing over drinks is desperate, as the conversations are so forced and unfunny, the screenplay must have read, “ADD BANTER LATER.”
The fifth note I wrote 10 minutes in, “I’ll bet he isn’t dead, because we didn’t see him die” becomes prophetic, though it’s a painfully easy twist to see coming. Why did Chastain, one of the best actresses in film, think a script this bad would provide her and three gifted but stranded co-stars a proper vehicle?
The PG-13 rating allows for one F-word and a lot of bloodless brutality. The whole thing reeks of a Netflix movie, as it’s star-studded but fatally generic and disposable.
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Chastain normally rises above a bad screenplay but not here. Kruger’s character is the most intense and interesting but it’s not her movie, while Cruz’s character is a real drag, until the world’s worst Zoom call inspires her to go from a scared bystander to a well attired sharpshooter in a matter of minutes.
Fan Bingbing enters the film late and her introductory scenes grind the whole thing to a halt.
Box Office: ‘Spider-Man’ Stays No. 1, ‘The 355’ Opens to Paltry $4.8M https://t.co/2VWDuc8MUg
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 9, 2022
If any of this was fun, trashy (knowingly or otherwise) or remotely funny, I could forgive it on so many levels. The closest this gets to camp are some ripe lines, like “I want those women dead!” and “You were beaten by a bunch of girls!” What we have is a movie unpleasant enough for most but emptily watchable enough to endure while killing time on a long flight.
There are lots of what I call gun-versations, as characters offer terse dialog while in a Mexican standoff (“Put down the gun,” followed by “No, YOU put down YOUR gun!”). The exposition never stops unraveling but the murky plot can’t overcome the bigger problem of characters we don’t know and hardly care about.
The grand finale settles for ripping off “Die Hard,” but the overly attentive editing undermines all of the action, even as Chastain dangles from the side of a building. Tom Cruise knew to have a camera fixate on him when he does his own stunts, while Chastain’s big moments feel like tossed off blips.
References to “M:i6” made me overly conscious of superior viewing choices, though a curious exchange regarding 007 stands out for being out of touch.
Someone notes, “James Bond didn’t have to deal with real life…James Bond always ends up alone.” Have none of these characters seen a Bond film since the Pierce Brosnan era?
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With a few minutes left on the running time, Chastain quickly dishes out the meaning of the title and it doesn’t land. Instead of cramming a tossed off history lesson into literally the last 4-minutes, perhaps she should have just said, “3+5+5=13…We’re The Unlucky 13!”
Krueger mentions earlier that a victim was caught in a “killbox,” another much better title. Better yet, just skip it altogether.
One Star
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The 355 Review: A-list Cast Fights Tough, But Can't Save Convoluted Plot
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‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’ Tried, and Failed, to Change Cinema
“Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” wanted to change the way movies were made, challenge our ideas of what a movie star could be and radically push forward the possibilities of animation.
Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara’s sci animated epic did none of those things, but it damn sure tried. This was the first CGI animated film in which the leads are photo-realistic humans.
The film’s outsized ambitions aren’t just admirable but rather astonishing; had this been the hit many expected, it could have resulted in the biggest reshaping of the movie business model and approach to popular filmmaking since “Star Wars.”
As is, “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” is a noteworthy flop, an under-looked video game adaptation and a curiosity item worthy of our respect, because it dreamed so big.
When we meet Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na Wen), she’s dreaming of aliens called Phantoms engulfing her and the world around her. Ross, alongside her mentor, Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland) are both open to controversial ideas, namely how science and spirits can co-exist.
The plot is part Robert Heinlein, part earthy mysticism, part philosophical rumination on whether belief in the soul, and Earth having a spirit, has any place in science. It’s a strange, overdone and emotionally distant work. Other than the small doses of comic relief (mostly via Steve Buscemi and the site of CGI humans making out), there is more mind than heart to this.
The film took four years to make and was mostly produced in a studio in Honolulu (that was shut down after the film’s box office failure). The budget was reported to be in the $115-137-million range, with $45 million going towards the “state of the art” Square Films animation studio in Hawaii.
The film’s crushing box office and the fallout that resulted for the future of Square Films was similar to that of “Titan A.E.” the year before, in which Don Bluth’s mammoth sci-fi animated flop ceased operations for future projects for the filmmakers.
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In full disclosure, I played “Final Fantasy III” in college and that’s it. Now, the series is currently on its 14th version. It seems the video game franchise has progressed so much, the financial disaster of the film adaptation is a distant figure in the rear view mirror of the creators.
If you see the film cold, unaware of its lengthy history as a best-selling video game, it’s a mixed bag as a sci-fi actioner. It peaks in the second act, when the action resembles “Aliens.” Despite multiple viewings, I still struggle to understand the plot, let alone sound coherent when telling others what it’s about.
Looking at “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” now, it appears more like a video game than the new frontier on animation that it once was. The CGI faces are rarely up to the emotion the actors are trying to project and the movement is video game-level at best.
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Elliot Goldenthal’s excellent score, some exciting action sequences and the insane ambition of the whole thing are what make it captivating.
Ming-Na Wen’s breathy, somewhat flat line readings sometimes sound hypnotic, sometimes dull. Alec Baldwin and Sutherland give the most oomph to their vocal performances, though it’s a distraction to hear their vocals servicing characters that look nothing like them.
Odd, how equally recognizable actors like Craig T. Nelson and Samuel L. Jackson can contribute to “The Incredibles” and I can lose myself to those characters but not here.
For example, Buscemi is voicing a handsome comic relief that looks nothing like him. James Woods’ villain resembles an evil Kiefer Sutherland, while Donald Sutherland looks nothing like himself, either, but gives the most feeling to his lines.
At the time of release, the animation wasn’t just beautiful but startling. The trailer gave the impression of nothing less than a game changer, with the big moment being not the sights of fantastical new worlds and aliens but a seemingly real human looking toward the camera and asking, “are you okay?”
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There were reports that the studio wasn’t simply aiming to start a new franchise, take animation up to The Next Level and make the first respectable video game movie, but actually planning to transform how movies were made.
Not only would the purported “Final Fantasy” movie series showcase the best of cutting-edge animation for grownups, it could have also expand the possibilities of how to utilize CGI film actors. Namely Dr. Aki Ross, who was rumored to be in the planning stages of having her own movies, or even being spliced into a different film playing a different character.
Imagine Jessica Rabbit playing the mother in “Brave” or Buzz Lightyear showing up in the ensemble cast of “Meet the Robinsons” (admittedly uninspired choices but you get the idea).
Instead of creating a digital actor as vivid as Gollum and as ubiquitous as Dwayne Johnson, Dr. Aki Ross never got farther than a curious centerfold in Maxim Magazine. That Dr. Ross, who was once touted as a CGI thespian avatar, would end up being an afterthought in a massive bomb of a movie and a curious choice for a soft core “men’s interest” magazine, is as fittingly weird as the film itself.
Subsequent, lavish experiments with CGI character realism (“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” “Beowulf” and “Avatar”) are better both at realistic detail and making characters that evoke our sympathy. When characters die here, it’s a bummer, nothing more.
The humans in “The Polar Express” (2004) are far less believable but I was much more engaged with them and their story.
As a video game film adaptation, there’s an integrity and determination to reach for the cosmos and achieve next-level film art that I still admire, even as the far reaching goals of this experiment has been surpassed.
It may not have changed cinema, but it deserves our respect and another look. Unlike dozens of video game movie adaptations that came and went, “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” is very good, though its overall goals were far more than merely that.
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