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Review: Origin

ORIGIN

Watching Origin, the mind-stirring new film from writer-director Ava DuVernay, I found myself leaning forward, the way you do when a friend you haven’t seen in a long time relates an intensely personal tale of loss or love or both. University students no doubt do the same when Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian portrayed in the film by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, stands before them, lecturing. Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents became a surprise bestseller during the pandemic. For the unlikely film version, DuVernay, who is skilled in both documentary (13th) and docudrama (Selma, When They See Us), sets out to bring Wilkerson’s ideas to a wide audience by placing the author’s life and the history she unearths side by side. The result is both unwieldy and deeply moving. 

Here is a rare and excellent thing — a major dramatic feature about a Black woman intellectual. DuVernay is blessed in Ellis-Taylor, who played the Williams sisters' mother in the tennis drama King Richard. She has a great gift for both elucidating arcane ideas and for filling Wilkerson’s many moments of solitary reflection with resonant meaning. The author suffers a great personal loss just as she’s about to begin her book project. Ellis-Taylor infuses Wilkerson’s intellectual journey with the abiding current of that loss. 

In the first of many historical reenactments, DuVernay begins with the February 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost) by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. It’s a heartbreaking sequence. When a magazine editor (Blair Underwood) asks the film’s Isabel to write about the case, she resists, but after listening to the 911 calls from Zimmerman and a neighbor who heard Martin crying out, she knows she must dig deeper. (The film utilizes the real 911 tapes.)

Isabel is troubled by the terminology we use to describe such events. Zimmerman may have been a racist, but was there something more at work? “Racism as the primary language to understand everything is insufficient,” Isabel tells her editor.

She is fascinated by the story of a German factory worker (Finn Wittrock) in love with a Jewish woman (Victoria Pedretti) who was captured in a photograph crossing his arms and refusing to salute Hitler like the workers around him. In the Nazi structure, Isabel sees an example of the caste system, a social hierarchy rooted in the accepted superiority of one class of people over another.

The most famous such system existed in India, where Dalits, or “untouchables,” have long been made to live in barren poverty while performing the most demeaning of social services. Late in the film, a scene depicting a man toiling deep into a vat of human excrement is juxtaposed against recreations of the Middle Passage of enslaved Africans as well as Jews being separated upon arrival at a concentration camp. This quick collage of harrowing imagery, while familiar to many, feels essential to this moment of a faltering collective memory.

Isabel begins her work by traveling first to Germany, where she stands one night before the shining light of “The Empty Library,” a public memorial to a 1933 book burning by Nazi Party university students, the reenactment of which may reverberate for moviegoers against memories of recent hate marches here in America. In Berlin, she’s shown documents revealing a 1933 meeting of Nazi lawyers who found in American Jim Crow laws all the inspiration they needed to begin preparing German society to accept “the Final Solution.”

The first hour of Origin moves in fits and starts, as if the filmmaker, like Isabel, is finding her way toward a unifying structure. At the film’s midpoint, Isabel attends a family picnic and begins explaining (or over-explaining) her thesis to her loyal cousin Marion (a marvelous Niecy Nash-Betts). “One more time, in English,” Marion says. “A little less Pulitzer Prize.” She continues, “Make it plain,” and as if heeding that call, DuVernay’s storytelling becomes more focused and direct. 

It’s in the rich details of the personal that Origin soars. In one beautiful scene, the presence of which seems meant to suggest that the people in our very own lives have a living history worth documenting, Isabel records the remembrance of Miss (Audra McDonald), a longtime friend. Miss’ story of a belittling high school principal contains gratitude toward her father even as its specifics fill her with both pain and anger, a range of emotions that ripple across McDonald’s face all at once. Hers is a brief, classic performance. 

Origin is challenging. It requires us to participate, to lean in, to listen. I’ve seen it twice and though I can see that it could be shorter and is sometimes didactic, its rewards are many, not least among them the affecting tenderness with which Isabel and those she loves approach one another. And in a season of good movies, you might be hard pressed to find a sequence as indelible as the final story Isabel is told. It involves a nine-year-old African American baseball player (Lennox Simms) circa 1951, who isn’t allowed to celebrate a championship victory with his white teammates. Like Trayvon Martin and the faces of so many whose histories momentarily intersect with Isabel’s, he’s unforgettable.

Chuck Wilson

Review: All of Us Strangers

ALL OF US STRANGERS

By Chuck Wilson

    The brilliant and emotionally gripping All of Us Strangers, from writer-director Andrew Haigh, opens with a nearly 50-year-old screenwriter named Adam (Andrew Scott) looking out over London as the sun rises. He’s in a new high-rise apartment, and Haigh places Adam’s reflection against the window glass so that it hovers, ghost-like, over the city. That’s apt because this is a movie about grief and ghosts (and new love, too) but it’s also about a successful man who’s a bit opaque, who’s not fully present in his life. He’s there, but also not. 

     Adam’s parents died in a car crash when he was 12. His new screenplay appears to be about that loss but so far, all he’s written is: “Suburban house, 1987”. After opening a box of mementos, among them a Christmas tree angel, dinosaur toys and an old-school flip lighter, Adam is inspired by a photo of his childhood home to take a train to his hometown and to that house. Nearby, while walking, he is drawn to follow a familiar-looking mustached man, who lights a cigarette (with the same lighter from the memento box, perhaps) and invites Adam to follow him. “Where?” Adam asks. “Home,” says the man. 

    And so it is that Adam’s father (Jamie Bell) takes him to the family home, which is warmly lit, and where, at the door, they’re greeted by Adam’s mother (Claire Foy). The parents know its Adam because they recognize his eyes. Inside, they bustle about, pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes and asking how Adam’s life has turned out—they’ve had many theories. They’re amazed that he’s a writer. Adam’s face turns pink with pleasure, a son who’s made his parents proud. 

     Someone puts on a record—the 1980s needle drops in this movie are sumptuous—and the parents dance, a couple in love. Adam leans against a door jamb, quiet, smiling, drinking them in. The hour grows late and as he leaves, the parents urge Adam to come back.

     Adam does return, more than once, and if he is indeed visiting with ghosts, it seems the most natural thing in the world. Adam comes out as gay to his mother, who is startled and says all the wrong things. Later, his father admits to having heard Adam crying himself to sleep after being bullied at school. Adam asks why he never came in to comfort him and the father’s reply is harsh but so honest Adam can’t be upset. One night, in a long and moving sequence, Adam sleeps over to celebrate Christmas. After decorating the tree, parents and son take a group photo just like the one in Adam’s old photo album. Something is being healed here. 

     Back in his London flat, Adam had begun an affair with Harry (Paul Mescal), who first appeared at his door a bit drunk, swinging a Japanese liquor bottle, and offering company. Twenty years younger than Adam, the scruffily handsome Harry seems adrift, in the building and in life. Adam initially rebuffed Harry but seeing his parents has set him in motion. He’s writing, and suddenly, there’s no good reason to be alone, day after day. For the first time in a long time (or maybe ever), Adam wants someone to dance with, too. 

     In an expansive adaptation of a 1987 novel by the Japanese writer Taichi Yamada, Haigh, who made the classic film, Weekend (2011), but may be best known in America for the HBO series, Looking, has written a four character film set in two locations that never feels stagey or stilted. The dialogue is the finest in recent memory, and so intimate as to be overwhelming. This movie continually causes a hush to settle over your heart. 

     Adam and Harry make love and then lay entwined, sharing histories and discovering that they share a common sense of otherness, despite the progress that’s been made for queer people. “It’s funny,” Adam says, “It doesn’t take much to make you  feel the way you felt. Back there again, skin all raw”. 

     Harry gives Adam a place to bring the outsized feelings that are being stirred by the visits home but there is a sense that it’s becoming too much, for Adam, for everyone. Good things have come from the journeys home—Adam’s “tangled” heart is becoming less so—but time and the universe can only bend so much.     

    In its final act, All of Us Strangers echoes the hilltop cemetery goodbye in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only here the dead are fully invested in the living which makes the words that must be said all the more crushing. These closing scenes are so beautifully acted by the film’s brilliant quartet of actors that the simple purity of performance will likely prove moving, even for those who find themselves resisting Haigh’s otherworldly metaphysics. For moviegoers who give themselves over to this remarkable film and its four sorrowful humans, something akin to glory awaits. 

Review: American Symphony

AMERICAN SYMPHONY

BY CHUCK WILSON

Awards season is upon us, which means famous people winning Oscars and Grammys while we mere mortals watch from home and imagine that those shimmering humans have it all. Standing on that stage, gold statue in hand, must surely be a perfect moment. Yet in the poignant documentary American Symphony, filmmaker Matthew Heineman is there as musician Jon Batiste wins five Grammys in 2022, including Album of the Year, only to find himself alone and bereft in a backstage green room after his moment of triumph. 

Batiste’s longtime partner and new bride, Suleika Jaouad, whom he first met when they were both teens in jazz camp, is not by his side. Instead, Jaouad watched the Grammys from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The leukemia that had first struck her at age 22 — the focus of her Emmy-winning New York Times “Life, Interrupted” column and video series — was back after 10 years of remission. She received her first round of chemo the day Batiste’s 11 Grammy nominations were announced. On the big night, Jaouad was in the hospital, preparing to fight for her life. Again.

Jon Batiste’s perfect moment had been anything but.

Widely known as the original band leader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the New Orleans-raised, Juilliard-trained Batiste is first and foremost a composer, and Heineman’s film is most potent when we see Batiste in the act of creation. Originally, this was meant to be a road movie tracking Batiste’s cross-country trip in search of musicians and sounds to incorporate into his first symphony. Jaouad’s resurgent illness changed the structure and tenor of the film, but Batiste did find his musicians, most of them young, and all of them clearly thrilled to be called to this moment. “There’s a space,” Batiste declares, “for us all to be different and quirky and strange and beautiful together.” The ensemble’s Carnegie Hall performance will provide the film’s rousing musical climax.

Rehearsals begin even as Jaouad is being admitted to the hospital to receive the second bone marrow transplant of her life, a rare “last resort option.” And so it is that, while Batiste is trying on tuxedos for the concert, Jaouad calls to say that her port is bleeding. Should he come home, or stay on schedule? He chooses to stay on course and at home, Jaouad carries on too, trying on the beautiful sequined dress (and fabulous hat) she hopes to be well enough to wear to Carnegie Hall. 

In a beautiful sequence at the rehearsal hall, Batiste begins to write a plaintive melody on the piano. It puzzles him. (Art begins in puzzlement.) He can’t fully fathom its parameters, which may be a metaphor for what he and his wife are going through. “Man, what is that,” he asks aloud. Later, during the concert, a technical glitch will force Batiste to improvise in front of 2,800 people. He faces the moment with preternatural calm, clearly a man who long ago learned to roll with the unexpected. It’s a skill he learned alongside his wife.

Batiste is pigeonholed by the media as perpetually upbeat — a historical expectation and trap for Black artists, the composer notes. In private, he suffers panic attacks and anxiety. Alone at home for weeks on end, Batiste’s mind races. He can’t sleep. “Some days you just want to stop the train.” But his young orchestra is waiting, and at Sloan Kettering, Jaouad has begun to paint, which is her way of moving forward, even from her bed. She says, “We both see survival as its own kind of creative act.” 

American Symphony is a striking departure for Heineman, who made his name with documentaries about the Mexican drug trade (the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land), the war in Afghanistan (Retrograde) and COVID-19 (The First Wave). To capture Batiste at a particular moment in time, the filmmaker avoids the usual trappings of a performer’s profile. Batiste won an Oscar for co-composing the score to Soul but there’s no mention of that accolade here. Stephen Colbert doesn’t pop up to sing his friend’s praises. Batiste’s hits are only referenced at a glance. Instead, the director gives precedence to the music of a given day, an approach that may frustrate diehard fans and confuse those who come to the film with only a cursory knowledge of Batiste’s work.

A love story more than anything, American Symphony may prove most meaningful to those with ongoing illness in their lives. It’s wrenching to see a chemo-weakened Jaouad curled in pain and deeply moving to see her husband pressed up against her, as if to absorb her torment. Gold statues don’t matter to cancer, a fact Jaouad and Batiste face each day with remarkable grace. Love and laughter see them through, and those, this moving film suggests, are tools readily available to us all.

American Symphony
Directed by Matthew Heineman. Streaming on Netflix beginning November 29.

Review: Priscilla

PRISCILLA

As Priscilla, filmmaker Sofia Coppola’s engrossing new film begins, it’s 1959 and 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is living in Wiesbaden, West Germany, where her stepfather, an Air Force captain, is stationed. Lonely for her friends back in Texas, Priscilla spends a lot of time painting her nails, spritzing her hair with Aqua Net, and reading fan magazines about the stars of the day, among them Fabian, Bobby Darin and that paradigm-shifting sensation, Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), who just happens to be in Germany, too, serving out his own military service.

This is a story about a time when people drank Coca-Cola from a glass bottle, and indeed, in the opening sequence, Priscilla, wearing a pretty pink sweater, is sitting at a drugstore counter, sipping a Coke with a straw. (Elvis drinks his Cokes with a straw, too.) A man approaches. Priscilla has caught the eye of a polite young Army officer (Luke Humphrey) who invites her to join him and his wife for a party in the coming weekend at the off-base home of his good friend Elvis Presley. He’s sure Elvis will enjoy meeting a young person from America, especially one from the South. 

A 24-year-old man setting out to woo an adolescent girl is unsettling, then and now, but Coppola leaves judgment to the viewer, and instead holds tight to Priscilla’s worldview, as recalled in her 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. Priscilla is rightly sure that her parents (Ari Cohen and Dagmara Domińczyk) will refuse to give her permission to accept the invitation, but they eventually give in. The polite officer wins them over. Riding in the backseat on the way to the party, her best coat buttoned up tight, Priscilla wears a pleased smile — not, one senses, because she’s on her way to meet a star, but because she won out over her parents. She’s 14, and set free suddenly, like a heroine in a story. That freedom will prove to be boundlessly enticing. 

If the first half of Priscilla is about what happens when two young people ride fame and exhilaration into a marriage they’re not the least bit prepared for, and the second half is what happens when reality pops their balloon, as it were, the party Priscilla attends in West Germany is addictively fabulous, for her, and for us. There is Elvis, mad handsome, in a room that is half-lit and warm, like a jazz club. Elvis is instantly charmed by Priscilla even as he realizes she’s absurdly young. Then he goes to the piano and just for her, pounds out a thrilling, blistering “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and that, maybe, is the first time Priscilla realizes, “Oh, wow, I’m with Elvis.”

Elordi never sings again in the film, but in that one number, and in the ways in which his Elvis remains a brilliantly gifted, easily manipulated fool, he becomes an icon who’s more relatable than the version depicted in Baz Luhrmann’s over-amped Elvis. Coppola is interested in the star’s inner angst only insofar as how it affects Priscilla, who is independent-minded enough to find her way to Elvis but not strong enough to prevent that rebellious spirit from being subsumed by his will. It will take Priscilla more than a decade to hear own voice again. Spaeny plays Priscilla from age 14 to 28, flawlessly, in a performance that seems likely to become classic. 

Much of the film is taken up with the minutiae of Elvis and Priscilla’s romance, which is interrupted by his remaining military service, Hollywood film duties and the need to win over her parents. Elvis begins taking prescription drugs to stay awake and go to sleep and Priscilla begins popping them too, to keep up with him, to be a part of his world. They help her to transform into the glammed-out arm candy Elvis needs, even as their subsequent marriage and the birth of Lisa Marie eventually pull her back to Earth. She tries to grow up, to evolve, but he doesn’t. Increasingly miserable in his career, Elvis broods and becomes unpredictable. Suddenly angry, he strikes Priscilla, then rushes to apologize, saying, “You know I’d never hurt you in any real way.” 

Like Coppola’s best films — The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette — Priscilla is evocatively tactile. Its rooms, from Priscilla’s teenage bedroom to Elvis’s club-like German digs to Graceland itself, are rich in detail and texture. We can feel ourselves in those rooms, alongside Priscilla, who likes to rub her toes in the shag carpeting. 

Priscilla is partly a movie about the joy of being in exotic places you never expected to be in and the time it can take, the years even, before the moment arrives when you realize the room you once loved is now soulless and empty. You think, oh so clearly: I gotta get outta here. At age 28, Priscilla Presley lived that moment, got into her car and drove away from the land of plenty, making her a heroine worthy of a movie to call her own.

Chuck Wilson

Review: Dark Harvest

DARK HARVEST

Director David Slade’s new Halloween horror movie, Dark Harvest has moments of visual verve and a cool pumpkin-headed demon ready to wreak havoc, but a confusing back story undercuts the story’s fright factor. That’s too bad because this home rental release, set in the 1960s, looks great and has a trio of gifted veteran actors in lead roles. They’re probably here less for the script than to work with the director of the underappreciated, but truly scary vampire film, 30 Day of Night, as well as Twilight: Eclipse.

Based on an acclaimed 2006 short novel by Norman Partridge, adapted by screenwriter Michael Gilio (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Dark Harvest opens on a Midwest farm town in 1963. It’s a place where the corn crows high, the boys dress like they’re auditioning for Grease and where Kelly (a winning E’myri Crutchfield), the only African American student in the high school, doesn’t dare dream of being asked to the town dance. All decisions are made by the Harvester’s Guild, the sponsors, each Halloween, of “the Run,” which finds the town’s teenage boys going a bit berserk in their attempt to hunt down and kill Sawtooth Jack (Dustin Ceithamer), a creature that rises out of the corn field each year to slaughter all it sees.

He who kills Sawtooth Jack becomes a hero and instant town legend. His parents are rewarded with a house in the nice part of town plus cash while the winning teen gets a Corvette and best of all, the chance to leave town for good, an option unavailable to everyone else. Gilio’s screenplay sidesteps details of why the townspeople can’t leave, or how they’re kept there, much less what exactly the town gets from killing said demon. A good crop, a la Children of the Corn? Dark Harvest is a film so riddled with anemic plotting (reportedly in keeping with the novel) that frustrated movie goers may give up in the first act, which has the added problem of being a bit light on action.

Be patient. Action will come, in a brief but bravura series of set pieces that begin with the town’s teenage boys being locked away for three days, without food, all the better, apparently, to turn them into killing machines. Channeling his inner Brian De Palma, Slade films the fellows from overhead, creating a montage of increasingly maddened youth, hungry, enraged, destructive. Released, the boys run into town, ready for mayhem, but they aren’t prepared for the reality of Sawtooth Jack, who steps forth, like a Close Encounters alien with a pale jack-o’-lantern head. A gaggle of guys hide in a storm cellar, trembling with bravado and then fear. Their collective demise, as a horrified little boy watches from a nearby bedroom window, is intense, and calls to mind the ferocious kills in Slade’s dazzling 30 Days of Night.

Dark Harvest never rises to such heights again, but its strong cast holds one’s attention. Casey Likes (who’s currently starring as Marty McFly in the Broadway musical of Back to the Future) plays Ritchie, who has invited Kelly to the school dance and promised to take her away when he’s victorious. His older brother won last year. Sitting in their posh new house, Ritchie’s guilt-ridden parents (Jeremy Davies and Twilight vet, Elizabeth Reaser) beg him to stay home. They know something about the Run he doesn’t, and if that secret doesn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of things, it at least gives the actors angst and outrage to play into the film’s home stretch.

The more compelling imponderable is how Luke Kirby came to play the murderous town sheriff, who cocks his head in disbelief at those who cross him. Kirby won an Emmy for his virtuoso turn as Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and is nominated again this year. If you hadn’t read this review, you well might turn to your friend or partner and say, “Is that the Mrs. Maisel guy? What’s he doing in this?”

What, indeed? Having fun, clearly, chewing scenery in the corn fields alongside Mr. Slade. You don’t get outtakes when you rent a movie at home, but Kirby’s would probably make for a worthy bonus.

Chuck Wilson

Review: DUMB MONEY

DUMB MONEY

GameStop lives, and is probably open late at a location near you. The fate of the often troubled videogame retailer is at the core of Dumb Money, a fast-paced and funny movie about the 2021 amateur stock trading craze on which the retail chain’s fortunes rose, fell, and then rose again. And if the filmmakers neglect to cap their tale with news of the store’s unexpected survival (the chain just posted a quarterly profit), well, the GameStop saga was never really about the store, was it?

Keith Gill (Paul Dano), a 32-year-old Massachusetts financial broker must have been a loyal customer because in the fall of 2019, he began singing the praises of GameStop in online videos recorded in his basement. To the astonishment of the few people paying attention to his initial posts, Gill reported buying 53 grand in stock, an idea that struck most as laughable. Everyone knew the hedge fund guys (“smart money”) were going to cash out big when GameStop crashed and burned. That’s how the world works, a truth Gill and his followers (“dumb money”) were destined to upend.

Gill calls himself Roaring Kitty on YouTube and DeepFuckingValue (DFV) on the subreddit thread, WallStreetBets, which is where he really takes off. His videos, recorded while wearing cat T-shirts and a red bandanna, catch on during lockdown. Soon, all manner of first time investors are using trading platforms such as RobinHood to invest their hard earned dollars just like their new hero, Roaring Kitty, who wins their confidence by posting spreadsheets of his entire stock portfolio. “If he is in, we are in.”

Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) and first-time screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, aided by ace editor Kirk Baxter (The Social Network), shift rapidly between connected story fronts: Keith at home, with his wife (Shailene Woodley) and baby and

the two-house estate of the initially derisive but gradually panicked hedge fund king, Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen). There are profiles too of Gill’s regular folk investors, including America Ferrera as a nurse and single mom, a loan-poor college couple played by Talia Ryder and Myha’la Herrold, and Anthony Ramos as a GameStop clerk with a boss (Dane DeHaan) who thinks him foolish for investing.

That boss isn’t exactly wrong. Surely none of these people should be pouring the little money they have into an online pipe dream, but an emotionally nimble cast makes the character’s faith in Roaring Kitty easy to believe and to root for. At one time or another, we’ve all hoped that the Pied Piper is one and true.

While all the characters are types, without any backstories, there’s pleasure in watching good actors shade in the empty spaces, and more than once, real laughs to be found in the easy villainy of the hedge fund guys. Arrogant zillionaire Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman) may be gleeful when Plotkin needs bailout cash but he deflates like a bully in the principal’s office when called to testify before Congress. That hearing is prompted by nefarious machinations by the RobinHood app, whose leader, Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan), suggests that you can indeed earn a billion and still be a complete moron.

Back in Massachusetts, Keith Gill’s GameStop stock keeps going up, and so too does the estimation with which his brother, Kevin (Pete Davidson), holds him. A bicycle riding DoorDash delivery guy (“I’m a first responder”), Kevin hasn’t amounted to much but he’s loyal– to his brother, to the memory of their late sister and to their working class parents (Kate Burton, Clancy Brown).

The cajoling interaction between the brothers gives Dumb Money its heart.  Kevin the slacker keeps surprising Keith the genius, just as, one senses, Dano and Davidson surprised and delighted one another. A movie about heartless one percenters being taken down a peg by folks who shop at the mall, Dumb Money may really be about two brothers giving each other the business.

Chuck Wilson

Review: The Nun II

THE NUN II

Unexpected blessings abound in The Nun II, an inevitable sequel to The Nun, the 2018 Conjuring-inspired horror film many saw and few loved. Fans watching the original again this week as prep (scary movie devotees do their homework), will note that it had a nifty bit of business involving bells, which signaled a living being inside a buried casket. Otherwise, it was heavy on howling demon CGI effects and a super-dull portal-to-hell backstory. 

We might have expected more of the same for the sequel, but instead, incoming director Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona) and a trio of writers new to the series, have fashioned a story that gives the expanded cast (including some gifted child actors) an increasingly amped-up series of run-for-your-life action sequences that prove to be quite diverting. 

The Demon Nun (Bonnie Aarons), as we’re meant to call her, does indeed howl, but sparingly, while her history grounded in dime-store Catholicism, is disposed of quickly. The filmmakers are actually jazzed about their living characters, and it’s clear they’re anxious to get to the third-act appearance of a wonderfully ridiculous horned hellhound, whose scene-stealing presence surely wasn’t approved in advance by the Demon Nun.

She, of course, was meant to have been banished back to Hell at the end of the first film by a priest (Demián Bichir), the psychically gifted Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), as well as a irresistibly sweet caretaker (Jonas Bloquet), working at a haunted Romanian abbey, circa 1952. 

Four years later, nuns and priests begin to die, gruesomely, including, as The Nun II opens, a priest who burns to death while seeming to float in midair, in a church in western France. The Vatican summons Sister Irene to investigate, a journey she’ll undertake with a younger nun, Sister Debra (Storm Reid). Together, they become a Holmsian pair of sleuths, with Debra, wonderfully played by Reid, bringing a welcome sense of skepticism to the story and a witty hit-the-demon-on-the-head logic to the big moments.

Maurice, meanwhile, is in Provence, working at a Catholic girls’ school housed in a 13th century convent so ragged, rundown and creepy that any parent who sends their child there should be prosecuted for cruelty. Stéphane Cressend’s production design, right down to a bit of plaster that is imprinted, ever so faintly, with the shrieking face of the Demon Nun, is terrific. Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey), the 12-year-old daughter of the teacher (Anna Popplewell) on whom Maurice is smitten, finds him a perfect match for her lonely mother, but she’s noticed that his body sometimes stiffens strangely, and that he can be scarily quick-tempered. At these times, it’s like he’s someone else, and indeed, poor Maurice is possessed by the Demon Nun. (This is not a spoiler). 

It takes director Chaves and screenwriter Akeela Cooper (Malignant), as well as the writing team of Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing (The Autopsy of Jane Doe), most of the film before they reunite Sister Irene and Maurice, whose sense of delight in one another, with a tasteful hint of romance, gave the first film a spark missing from the story itself. Their reunion comes at the end of a frightening few days at the girls' school. 

Bullied by three mean girls, Sophie is enticed into a forbidden chapel in which the son of the headmistress (Suzanne Bertish) died years ago. The girls scare Sophie with tales of a devil-haunted stained glass, and later, the headmistress herself is lured there by laughter that sounds a lot like her dead son. All of this is nicely unnerving, and occasionally gruesome. Young teens, who are sure to see The Nun II, with or without their parents, are likely to dig the Hogwarts-gone-wrong vibe. 

It is unexpected to like The Nun II so much, but in its over-the-top horror and action filled finale there is the sense of a filmmaker looking to shock and surprise, but to do so playfully. The Conjuring universe, as it's known, which includes the Annabelle haunted doll movies, takes itself very seriously. There’s not much joy in the telling. But The Nun II dares (gasp!) to have some fun. 

Chuck Wilson

     

Review: Theater Camp

THEATER CAMP

by Chuck Wilson

Early on in Theater Camp, a lovingly observed comedy about a beleaguered performing arts summer camp, the power goes out during auditions, but not even total darkness can deter 15-year-old Christopher (Luke Islam) from nailing the final note of “Defying Gravity”. In a nearby kitchen, the camp cook soldiers on too, adding, by flashlight, a dollop of whiskey to the chili pot before taking a swig for herself. At Camp AdriondACTS, everyone’s on edge since it’s becoming clear that the camp isn’t likely to survive the illness that has beset founder Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris), a malady triggered by an over-produced middle-school production of Bye Bye Birdie. 

     As the young Birdie lead, Sebastian (Alexander Bello), relates the story of Joan’s collapse to his riveted campmates, co-directors (and co-writers) Nick Lieberman and Molly Gordon (who also stars) cut away just as Sebastian states, “I obviously stayed in character.” Summer theater camp, no surprise, is filled with kids and adults who view staying in character as a core life philosophy, particularly the pathologically co-dependent Rebecca-Diane (played by Gordon) and Amos (co-writer Ben Platt), who spent their childhoods under Joan’s tutelage and now return each summer to teach and to write the summer musical. This year’s show will be an epic about Joan herself. Bringing this opus to life, Rebecca-Diane promises her adolescent cast, “will break you.” 

     Footage of Rebecca-Diane and Amos performing at AdriondACTS as kids is actually footage of Gordon and Platt in their days at a California performing arts studio for children. They’ve known each other half of forever, as have Platt and Lieberman. Platt and Noah Gavin, who plays Glenn, the camp’s secretly talented stage manager, and also co-wrote the script, both starred in Dear Evan Hansen. This quartet of friends has made a movie that might be classified as a “mockumentary,” but the filmmakers clearly have too much love for the story’s setting to mock it, or satirize its subjects too sharply, although Platt isn’t afraid to show that Amos has zero life beyond the borders of summer camp. 

     Arriving to save the camp from foreclosure, Joan’s son Troy (Jimmy Tatro), a straight bro vlogger who fancies himself a financial wizard, is living his own version of stunted adolescence, a fact the camp kids spot right off. They ignore him, completely, much to Troy’s chagrin. Galvin’s Glenn tries to guide him, but Troy keeps stumbling, particularly in his attempt to woo and outwit a hedge fund financier (Patti Harrison) with a dastardly plan to take over the camp, a laugh-free plotline that slows the film down. 

     In a movie with few scenes that last more than a few minutes, there are funny bits about the thriving black market in Throat Care tea and the important distinction between the close-knit Rent kids and the finger-snapping “Fosse” gang. When straight boy Devon (Donovan Colan) is caught playing football with boys from another camp, his queer campmates are horrified. Football! And the outrage over a child actor using a mentholated “tear stick” is likely to be the film’s lasting comic moment. 

     Rebecca-Diane and Amos’ trouble plagued musical, Joan, Still, comes together for opening night, in a protracted sequence that gives Theater Camp a much-needed burst of musical theater exuberance. The songs are bad but also kinda great, and include a Studio 54 number with a white feather boa as a line of cocaine that is a testament to the inventiveness of low-budget theater. We’ve all seen shows like Joan, Still. The luckier among us have performed in them. On such a night, even tearing tickets means you're working in the theater. There is no greater joy.     

     

Review: Sanctuary

SANCTUARY

By Chuck Wilson

The remaining film year isn’t likely to bring an action movie or thriller with turns of plot as exhilarating as those that fill director Zachary Wigon’s Sanctuary, a two-character, one location battle of wits between a sex worker and her longtime client. Already, we’ve given away a plot point, but Wigon and screenwriter Micah Bloomberg make it clear right off that there’s something performative in the way Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) strides into the small but luxurious Denver hotel suite of late 30s-ish Hal (Christopher Abbott).

Hal’s hotelier father has just died and he’s about to take over as CEO, a role for which he may lack the killer instinct. Rebecca is here with a legal questionnaire, but her questions turn weirdly personal  even as Hal seems to be playing a game of his own in his replies. Who’s lying? They both are, or rather, they’re following a script Hal wrote out in advance. He always writes a script for a visit from Rebecca, a dominatrix specializing in humiliation (not intercourse).

The lawyer-client scenario will ultimately lead to Rebecca degrading Hal, quite literally down to his knees, which will excite him sexually. This scene is familiar to them both, but is as intense for Hal as if it’s playing out for the first time.

Is it a good idea for the heir to an international hotel chain to rendezvous regularly with a dominatrix? Hal is thinking not and means this night to be a farewell—he’s brought a goodbye gift. The news catches Rebecca short but as a woman whose entire life is based on intelligent response to sudden adversity, she quickly regroups. Soon, she’s coming at Hal with a new vision for their shared future, one that will lead to a dizzying new series of mutual mind games.

Structured like a play, with colored lights swirling down between acts, Sanctuary is remarkable for never feeling stagey. On paper, the hotel room setting is limiting, but Italian cinematographer Ludovica Isidori (Test Pattern) never seems to shoot it from the same angle twice. Her camera often takes its cue from Hal’s emotional state, which veers into whirligig panic when Rebecca hints at having planted cameras in the room. His dead billionaire father would have asked for proof but Hal goes right to freak out, triggering a scene of destruction that’s both alarming and madcap. It’s a good thing this guy owns the hotel.

It seems a good bet Sanctuary will eventually play on an arthouse double bill with Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, the 2002 Maggie Gyllenhaal/James Spader dom/sub love story. Secretary paved the way for Sanctuary and is surely a weirder, sweeter, and more emotionally complex film. Years from now, Sanctuary may feel more clever than profound, but right now, Bloomberg’s cruelly sharp dialogue is a pleasure to the ear, and Qualley and Abbot a sparring match worthy of the Broadway stage. We hang on their every word but more thrillingly, on their every thought. All night, Rebecca and Hal hurl words and scenarios at one another, until they arrive, abruptly, at a place beyond role play. If revelatory dialogue can be like an orgasm, they share one, and it’s a kick.

 

 

Review: Inside

INSIDE 

     Tell the truth–the last time you broke into a penthouse apartment in Manhattan to steal million-dollar art, you took your cell phone with you, just in case your brilliant plan went awry. You’re smart that way. But alas, Nemo, the thief Willem Dafoe portrays in the cerebral new film, Inside, isn’t as organized, although it could be said that his dilemma will prove to be existential as much as practical. When security systems unexpectedly engage, sealing Nemo inside the apartment as tightly as a pharaoh in a tomb, he will not be able to call for help (and the police never arrive). 

     Director Vasilis Katsoupis, a Greek documentarian making his feature debut, and screenwriter Ben Hopkins, sidestep the big markers of plot logic in favor of immediately narrowing Nemo’s world. A pro, he does not panic. The water and gas are turned off but there’s a decorative wading pool filled with water, and though the refrigerator is pretty empty, there are tins of caviar, and vodka, and for a day or two, that’s sufficient. 

     The freezer is timed to the apartment sound system, which breaks out with the dance song “Macarena” if Nemo leaves the door open too long. This seems to both amuse and insult him, as if the absent owner is mocking his lowbrow tenant. Weeks into his ordeal, a depleted Nemo will bury his head deep into that freezer to relieve the 104 degree temperature that has risen from the apartment’s air conditioning, which swings between the extremes of hot and cold as if to purposefully torture. 

     A man of action, Nemo begins using a knife to dig through the huge wooden front door. That door will prove impenetrable, but as an object, it is textured and beautiful and the warmest sight in this sleek, minimalist apartment. In work that deserves to be remembered at awards time, production designer Thorsten Sabel (Cloud Atlas) has created a space for the captured thief that suggests a homeowner living in service to modern art and willing to sacrifice comfort for its proper presentation. Art aficionados will want to lean close to study Inside, which features new and recreated work by modern artists such as Egon Schiele, Petrit Halilaj and Cinthia Marcelle. 

     Nemo came to steal three Schiele portraits, but only found two. In an unnerving sequence that made my heart beat a little faster, the third painting surfaces, and for a moment, it seems like a clue to an escape route. Instead, the find triggers a deeper unraveling of Nemo’s psyche. Trapped for months, he is losing it. The process, as the brilliant Dafoe reveals, is occuring in time with the deterioration of his body. Nemo also discovers an old manuscript he begins to read aloud, the meaning of which I couldn’t quite parse but which shifts him toward a kind of exaltation. 

     An art thief who truly loves art, and who drew as a boy, Nemo begins sketching soon after he’s trapped, first in a notebook, and eventually, on the walls. The thief is finally making art of his own, even as his increasingly desperate effort to build a tower made of furniture and detritus as a ladder to a possible rooftop escape leads him to pillage the masterpieces he would have once wanted to steal. 

     It’s a testament to Dafoe’s soulful intensity that we continue to worry over Nemo even as we realize his story isn’t likely to lead to a resounding or fully satisfying finale. That may disappoint some, but between the sketches, the tower to the sky, and the bony outlines of Nemo’s sunken body, Inside suggests that we’re witnessing the creation of a living art installation, one composed, in equal measure, of pain and hope. 

Chuck Wilson