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Review by Daniel Lima  Anyone used to exploring the depths of the low budget genre movies of yesteryear will be familiar with a particular kind of disappointment. You come across a film with an exciting title, a promising premise, and a cool poster: Dracula’s Dog, The Drifting Avenger, most giallo. Then you watch it and find that it’s mostly people standing around and talking to each other, with a handful of moments sprinkled about that capture that imagined greatness. Werewolves hearkens back to that ignoble tradition, but in the days of bloated, sanitized, impersonal studio IP movies, its shaggy contours become charming in their own right. “One year ago a supermoon turned millions into werewolves.” This ludicrous line opens the film, immediately setting the stakes and the tone. With a new supermoon about to rise, a crack team of CDC scientists seeks to test a way to prevent these transformations. Frank Grillo barricades the home of his brother’s wife and daughter before leaving to head the operation, as the world’s least convincing virologist. Naturally, things go awry, and both Grillo and his family must fight to survive the night. The ironically self-aware genre throwback has been a plague on modern cinema, and thankfully Werewolves avoids that trap by committing wholeheartedly to the silliness of its premise without ever tipping over into parody. Though many elements are fantastic and absurd — the gung ho neighbor, the repeated use of the word “moonscreen”, the monsters themselves, Frank Grillo playing a scientist — they are treated with the frankness and gravity they should demand within the context of this reality. Beyond providing the audience a level of buy-in that makes what happens feel like it matters, this straight-faced treatment of the material makes it even seem even goofier; I know I laughed every time someone said “moonscreen”, or a character did something that strained credulity, or an entire conversation did nothing but reiterate the obvious. That’s helpful, because one thing this movie has plenty of is filler. Even at barely over ninety minutes, Werewolves strains to engineer enough narrative momentum to propel it to the credits. There is barely any character work to speak of, with the action divided between Grillo’s homeward quest with his forgettable companion, and his forgettable sister-in-law alone at home with a forgettable child. The number of times the gruff man of action stops to just say, “We have to keep moving”, is truly baffling. As funny as it is at first, when it dawns on you that this will be most of the movie it becomes a tad less amusing.  The most confounding choice, however, is how the film looks. This would largely be in keeping with most modern low budget genre thrillers, if it werent’t for the lighting. Throughout the first set piece, when the titular creatures first rear their heads in a government facility, the lights are flashing so rapidly it creates a migraine-inducing strobe effect. Never before have my eyes been so physically discomforted by a movie; epileptics, stay away. More annoying is the amount of artificial lens flare, often overwhelming the screen to the point that it’s hard to make out what is happening. I can only imagine these choices were made to help obscure how cheap the actual werewolf costumes actually are, but it instead just makes the film an ugly mess.
It also obscures what is far and away the best part of the movie. Yes, these are practical werewolves. Yes, they are stiff, only vaguely dog-like,, and look like hair stuck to rubber or latex. Yes, they are awesome. For some reason filmmakers and audiences have decided that a fake, rubbery CGI creation that does not exist is somehow easier to believe in than a fake, rubbery piece of fake rubber that does. The latter, since it actually exists in physical space, allows for more interesting ways to shoot the monsters: they can share the frame with the heroes without breaking the illusion, interact with the environment to make them seem more of a threat, a scene can be staged without have to guess how it will look after post. As obviously artificial as they are, the magic of cinema quickly asserts itself, and you accept that these are dangerous, bloodthirsty predators. Are they utilized to maximum effect? Not quite. Again, the visual language of the film does undermine their appearances, along with some rapid editing to further make things unintelligible. Too often do the wolves appear only for nothing to actually happen, and as the finale draws near it does seem like they are rather easy to outsmart and outfight. That said, this movie is at its best when they are front and center, and towards they end it finally delivers on the high-octane lycanthropic thrills that one would hope for. Ultimately, Werewolves does fail to be a proper spiritual successor to the excellent Dog Soldiers, but in doing so hits on a particular niche appeal that is increasingly rare. It’s messy, it’s dumb, it’s occasionally boring, but when it works it works. If this movie had come out forty years ago, it might have looked and felt largely the same, spoken about today as a hidden gem of an era that looks even better in hindsight. Hopefully, the decades to come will see this in that same light. Werewolves is now in theaters. Rating: 3.5/5
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Review by Daniel Lima  The hitman who attempts to leave behind their criminal life, only to be forced to fight out of the underworld, is a stock narrative, particularly within the past two decades of Korean cinema. There's nothing wrong with adhering to formula, so long as it is executed in an exciting, idiosyncratic way. At the very least, the familiar contours should manage to hold an audience's attention for a couple of hours. Sadly, A Man of Reason doesn't quite measure up, delivering only the barest minimum of what is expected of the genre and being all the lesser for it. Jung Woo-sung directs and stars as the contract killer, out of prison for the first time in ten years. Though he wants to rebuild his relationship with his wife and daughter, he finds himself marked for death by his former employer and so must use his particular set of skills to defend his family and forcefully sever his ties to the past. It's boilerplate material, yet there are missteps in establishing even this very basic premise. The former employer isn't actually the antagonist; instead, it's his lieutenant, a brown-noser who is simply jealous of the admiration his boss holds for Woo-sung. He does not personally see to the killing; instead, he relies on outside help. That outside help comes in the form of a pair of assassins who specialize in explosives. The result is our hero finds himself up against hirelings that he has no personal connection to, working for a villain he barely knows, who works with a powerful mobster who holds no animus towards him. Which is to say, there's precious little emotional stake in the actual conflict.  That should come from Woo-sung's connection to his wife and daughter. However, he doesn't even know he has a daughter until he's out of prison, and spends most of the film separated from both. Where films like The Man from Nowhere or The Killer externalize their protagonists' conscience but take the time to develop the bonds they form with their innocent morality pets, A Man of Reason simply asks the audience to accept that its hero will go to any length to protect his family. It's certainly enough to move the plot along but not enough to make an audience emotionally invested in what happens.
None of that would matter if the film at least delivered thrilling set pieces. Sadly, this is where Jung well and truly drops the ball. The handful of action beats here are about as exciting as all the exposition: low-speed car chases, shooting a nail gun as the target jogs into cover, choppily-edited fist fights in the dark. Truthfully, much of the action in the classic Korean revenge thrillers of the '00s and '10s probably would not hold up today, but they at least committed to delivering a brand of stylized violence that hadn't really been seen up to that point. The only thing commendable here are the explosions, which seem practical, yet even they pale in comparison to another actor-director's action thriller, Hunt. Coincidentally, Jung Woo-sung had a starring role there; it's a pity he didn't take notes. All that said, nothing in A Man of Reason is exceedingly poor. It follows the expected beats of this kind of story andblunders its way through the narrative and the action, but not enough to earn ire. It certainly is not a success, but it's not a total failure. In a way, it'd be preferable if it were, as it would at least be memorable. Instead, it evaporates from the mind shortly after watching, leaving in its place the desire to revisit any number of better examples of its genre. A Man of Reason arrives in theaters July 5 and hits VOD on July 9. Rating: 2.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  Lakshya in Kill. Courtesy of Roadside Attractions. I distinctly remember that in the fall of 2023, I was listening to an interview with stuntman/action director Lee Whittaker about his experiences working within the various Indian film industries (on Action Talks with Eric Jacobus, highly recommended). At one point, he was asked whether it would ever be possible for an Indian filmmaker to make something akin to the Indonesian film The Raid, that is, a stripped-down, brutal action film that abandons the ample melodrama and gravity-defying opulence of many Indian blockbusters in favor of a more grounded genre experience. It’s a question that made me chuckle, as while the interview was months old, the Hindi actioner Kill had just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it promised precisely that. The film has consistently been described as “The Raid on a Train,” and there’s no better way to do so. An army commando finds himself on a train that dozens of bandits have taken over, and it’s up to him to take them down. The film is under two hours, set almost entirely in one location, the fights are visceral and violent to an almost shocking degree, and there is only the barest amount of narrative groundwork laid. In short… it’s The Raid on a train. Obviously, the selling point here is the action, as hyperviolent and frantic as one would expect, given its obvious influences. Pitted against such an overwhelming force, the protagonist is forced to use every tool at his disposal against his foes, including the claustrophobic environment. To that end, the choreography departs from the typical Indian style of pseudo-superheroics, instead adopting a more realistic approach. Well, as realistic as carving through forty armed men can be. Throughout the many, many fights, characters utilize whatever weapons they can, from knives to canes to guns to fire extinguishers. Navigating the confined space provides an additional challenge and aids in combat, restricting movement but allowing one man to take on many without being swarmed. While limited to only one setting, there is a deliberate attempt to break up the visual staleness of the surroundings and introduce new dynamics to the action: taking a fight to the bathroom, opening a locked door while a friend provides cover, facing down one particularly large adversary. And, of course, all of this is uncompromisingly bloody, with an almost overwhelming amount of stabbing, mauling, cutting, and killing. It’s all admirably intricate, as one could expect from the action director pairing of Parvez Shaikh and Se-yeong Oh (who previously collaborated on films such as War and Tiger 3). However, it cannot be helped that there is a sameness to all the action, largely because of a lack of variance in both the actual choreography and the intensity of the action. Violence breaks out about fifteen minutes into the film and carries on at the same level for the next hour and a half. Considering the premise, we will inevitably see the number of villains dwindle, and there is a dwindling return on the impact of all the gore. Worse yet, there is little to distinguish all the combatants while they are fighting, as impressive as it all is to coordinate. Watching The Raid, there is a clear difference in how all the characters fight, befitting their personalities and the martial abilities of their actors. That personal touch is lacking here, and by the end, it all blends together.  Lakshya in Kill. Courtesy of Roadside Attractions. Adding to this effect is the strength of the narrative, or lack thereof. As silly as it seems to critique a film like this for how it establishes its ensemble, it must be said that the short amount of time spent with them is not enough to engender any strong feelings about whether they survive. There is an atmosphere that anyone may die at any moment, but it is impossible to care, since they are all so thinly sketched anyway. If anything, the perfunctory romance that serves as the protagonist’s motivation actually does the movie a disservice, as the treatment of the love interest feels almost distasteful. Even the villains, as dastardly and cruel as they are, never feel particularly threatening to the commando hero.
None of this would matter if this movie delivered action that felt as fresh and exciting as its inspiration. Unfortunately, we already have The Raid, and plenty of other action movies have taken their own cues from that film’s brand of grounded martial arts mayhem. This raises the question: why is the thought of an Indian take on this same style appealing in the first place? As over-the-top and bloated as many Indian blockbusters can be, it is a style that other industries around the world are slow to draw influence from. Is it not more exciting to see the lengths that minds like Anbariv, Dhilip Subbarayan, or even an imported talent like Yannick Ben push the homegrown approach to stage action, rather than see the likes of Bollywood, Tollywood, and Kollywood adopt the same thing everyone else is? All that said, it’s not like Kill is not successful at what it does. For those looking for frenetic, close-quarters combat that leaves pools of blood on the floor and ears ringing with the sounds of crunching bones and disembowelment, this will supply that. Despite its missteps, it’s not even a bad version of its premise. Seeing the diversity and singular nature of Indian action cinema today, however, we should expect more than just “The Raid on a Train.” Kill hits theaters July 4. Rating: 3.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  No one knew how to name a movie like Italians in the 1970’s. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Hey Amigo! A Toast to Your Death. Watch Me When I Kill. No matter how middling the movie, it was often accompanied by a distinct and evocative title that promised intrigue and danger. In that way, The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer is something of a spiritual successor. Unfortunately, it also shares something else with those earlier films: it does not deliver on that promise. John Magaro plays the titular writer, who has been working on his second book for years with no end in sight. His literary agent has become disinterested in him, his marriage is on the rocks, and he can do no more than lamely explain to anyone who will listen how his novel is about the last Neanderthal. It’s at this low point of his life that a stranger approaches him with an offer: write a story based on the stranger’s former life as a serial killer. When Magaro’s wife finds the stranger in her home, the two pretend he is a marriage counselor, setting up an interesting dynamic that does not ever pay off. The premise sounds like ample ground for some black comedy hijinks or the setup to a dark comparison between relationships between romantic partners and those formed by murderers and their victims. While there is a paltry attempt to do this, the film takes so long to set up this state of affairs that there’s little runway to make the most of the conceit. The Shallow Tale is never more fun than in its last third, as characters begin to grow suspicious of one another and flimsy plots begin to spiral out of control, but by that point, it is too little too late. The journey to get there sorely lacked the energy of the finale, and the best part of the movie is over as quickly as it began.  The three leads — Magaro, Britt Lower as his wife, and Steve Buscemi as the retired serial killer — all commit to their performances, and every laugh the film earns is more on their shoulders than on the limp material they are given. The comic rhythm and sensibility of the film never seem quite right, going from droll and dry to absurdist to meta and ironic at the drop of a hat. This lack of consistency gives the film an unevenness that feels less like “anything can happen” and more like “there is no coherent vision for what this story actually is.” Considering the uneven pace of the narrative as a whole, this appears to be the case.
It’s impossible to watch this and not think about the recently released Hit Man. That film is similarly a riff on mystery and crime stories that incorporates romance into genre thrills and vacillates in tone. Those are where the similarities end: that movie has a clear thesis, has a deliberate build in how absurd the comedy is, and knowingly wrings as much as it can from its premise. Of course, that is a film from Richard Linklater, an artist who has been making films for decades, whereas The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer is the English-language debut of a comparatively young filmmaker. Hopefully, Tolga Karacelik will learn from the missteps of this shallow tale going forward. The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which ran from June 5-16 in New York City. Rating: 2.5/5 [Tribeca 2024] SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE -- Arresting Visuals Compensate for Limp Characters6/10/2024 Review by Daniel Lima  The more films one sees, the more appreciative one gets when something comes along that displays a unique and singular vision, even if it doesn’t all neatly come together. She Loved Blossoms More, the second feature from Yannis Veslemes, toys with a lot of ideas, both narrative and visual, not all of which feel adequately explored. However, the commitment to trying out these ideas goes a long way in making this a strangely compelling experience.
Three brothers live secluded in an old mansion, their family home. Funded by a mysterious benefactor, they perform experiments with a device that allows for travel between dimensions in an effort to bring their mother back from the dead. That description implies a more straightforward story than what is actually offered; for the most part, the three brothers hang out and get on each other’s nerves, and interlopers and their own attempts to alleviate their misery stymie their scientific progress. Though the low-budget film is entirely set in and around one house, the space is filled and shot in an utterly captivating fashion. The production design is impeccable, not only because of the many impressive and gnarly practical effects but also because of how it brings to life an ancestral home turned into a workspace for three unsupervised young men. The grounds have been overtaken by unkempt foliage, the rooms and hallways cluttered with stray bits of technology and books, the furniture old relics of their own childhood, the walls chipped and dirtied. The neglect and lack of care reflect the goals and personalities of the characters and give the setting a truly lived-in feel. Tight compositions and fisheye lenses constrain the image, creating a sense of claustrophobia and anxiety that grows suffocating as the mental strain on the brothers increases. There is a textured look that, if not the result of actual film stock, adds a certain weight to the image, and the neon lighting that reflects the characters’ casual use of psychotropics gives the most surreal sequences a certain flair. All of this cleverly makes the most of the production’s meager means. The characters themselves, however, are not nearly as interesting as how they are captured. While the twisted nature of this family begins with an Oedipal edge and slowly reveals darker layers, the brothers are simply not particularly fun to be around, lacking discernible personalities beyond laconic, also laconic, and deadbeat. As twisty as their interpersonal drama becomes, it ultimately relies on the audience being invested in their goals and well-being. That context required comes far too late to engender any sympathy for them. The principal leads do what they can with what they are given, but it is Sandra Sarafanova who steals the show. The girlfriend of one of the brothers, she arrives in the house and takes full command of every scene she is in — playful, charming, and sensual at all times. She is a breath of life in a setting purposefully designed to be stodgy, and it would be wonderful if this were the start of a fruitful career. She Loved Blossoms More is a film that is technically impressive and occasionally even enchanting. Though the thematic exploration of grief falters without anything to ground it, the visual language is engaging enough to make it a worthwhile watch. She Loved Blossoms More is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 Rating: 3/5 Review by Daniel Lima  There is something commendable in attempting to capture intangible human emotions and experiences through layers of inscrutable abstraction. Darkest Miriam tackles grief, depression, and alienation with a degree of cool removal that is, if nothing else, more interesting than the conventional form a story like this might usually take. Even so, its form ultimately fails to complement the character — and the performance — at its center. Britt Lower stars as Miriam, a woman living a painfully lonely and unfulfilling existence. Her job at the local library sees her dealing with inane complaints, crotchety locals, and demeaning tasks all day. She has no hobbies, no friends, and is grappling with trauma that has isolated her from the world around her. A chance connection at a park with a local cab driver sees some light shine into her dreary life, even as she begins to find increasingly threatening letters at work that seem directed at her. There is a world where this takes on a certain darkly quirky tone, which is uncommon among indie romcoms. Instead, Darkest Miriam does its best to resist categorization, more or less abandoning a coherent and propulsive narrative structure for what amounts to a series of encounters meant to evoke familiar feelings in anyone trying to eke out a comfortable living in modern society. The time spent in the library is a series of unpleasant, disconnected scenes capturing the feeling of constraint and claustrophobia when working someplace that exacerbates how miserable you feel. While the time spent with Lower and her lover is more freeing and happier by an order of magnitude, they are not concerned with building to a dramatic high point or even charting the course of a traditional courtship. They are merely snapshots of an intimate relationship, an escape from the disaffecting drudgery of everyday life.  Unfortunately, that lack of focus is a double-edged sword. While the attempt to cultivate an atmosphere around the character of Miriam is commendable, it never properly defines her to begin with. This is not a particularly esoteric film, but the lack of a traditional narrative, with peaks and valleys and things that characters are forced to react to, means the sole point of interest is in its lead. Despite all the time spent with her, however, she is mostly a cipher, ill-defined beyond a pervading sense of sadness when she's not with her new beau.
Perhaps most damning is how leaden the central romance actually is. Though Lower and Tom Mercier (as the cab driver) are doing what is called of them in a film as low-key as this, it can't be said that the two have chemistry, nor is there any charge to the conversations they have with one another. The lack of narrative build clearly works against them here, as without the structure it would provide, the emotional core of the movie rides on how much one gets out of the two reading books to each other or Lower giving Mercier a bath as they exchange dead stares. Even so, the vexing, dreamlike quality of Darkest Miriam may ultimately be more helpful than harmful. It's hard to imagine that a more conventional approach to the material — requiring a defter hand at defining characters and writing dialogue — would have played to the filmmaker's strengths, and it certainly would not have distinguished itself among its peers. For those looking for an offbeat, darker take on the rom-com and have exhausted every other option, this may scratch a certain itch. Darkest Miriam is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 in New York City. Rating: 2/5 Review by Daniel Lima  The democratization of filmmaking has allowed many people who would otherwise never be able to make a movie the ability to do so. Sometimes, this allows for unique perspectives and the kind of passion projects that would never make it past the studio gatekeepers of Hollywood. Other times, you get something like They're Here, a documentary that reveals absolutely nothing about its subject matter, the people it follows, or those who put time and energy into getting it made. This is nominally a documentary about alien encounters, or more specifically, the people who believe they have made contact with otherworldly beings. Young burnouts who believe they witnessed extraterrestrial activities, retirees who claim a cordial relationship with alien scientists, and one old man who simply wants to believe in something greater than himself. The one thing that unites them beyond their incredible experiences is… well, that gets to the heart of the problem. All these people are residents of upstate New York and even congregate at a small festival for people who have had these close encounters. Strangely, this scene that provides such an obvious and useful structure to all the individual stories is buried thirty minutes into a movie that is barely over an hour long. Instead, the film haphazardly bounces between all these people, with no rhyme or reason and no actual narrative to push forward. It amounts to a bunch of random interviews with a peculiar ensemble.  That lack of connective tissue is an immediate indication of the lack of thematic focus that plagues They're Here. Though the people offering their own experiences often talk about reaching out to others and forming a community that will support each other as they all search for answers, the filmmakers are clearly uninterested in showing that side of these people's lives. One would assume that in lieu of that, there is a deeper interrogation of the participants, exploring who they are and how their experiences have fundamentally changed them or what draws them to make the claims they do (or alternatively, what draws aliens to them). Since the film spends so much time bouncing between all of them, however, no one receives the definition that could prove insightful. As far as this film is concerned, their entire lives began and ended with their fantastic accounts and interest in UFOs. That does not offer a particularly compelling portrait of these people. That manipulation that reduces these people to only UFO cultists is evident through much of the filmmaking craft. The festival shows multiple characters who we have been introduced to talking to each other for seemingly the first time, an obvious construction that would have been less obvious had it been laying the groundwork at the start. Many conversations are shot-reverse shot as if they were in a traditional narrative film, lending each of them a suffocating sense of artifice. Then, there are the abduction sequences, which seem to exist only to get this to feature length.  If there is anything to dissect here, it is the pervading sense of loneliness and sadness that all these people share. Beyond the scorn and disbelief they are met with whenever speaking their personal truth, it's not hard to read into each of them a discontent with their lives, a sense that there needs to be something vast and powerful out there that they have been allowed to make contact with. It just so happens that that need drove them to aliens rather than religion. This is most evident in the younger people interviewed, two men who clearly have very little going on in their lives (and one who might be the least funny person to ever attempt stand-up comedy), and in an older metalworker named Steve.
Steve is an associate of a local UFO group, going to meetings and clearly being fascinated by the idea of abduction. He spends long hours in his machine shop, hoping to retire but lacking the means to do so. At the prodding of his friend who leads the group (or perhaps the filmmakers, hoping for good content), he undergoes hypnotherapy in an attempt to uncover suppressed memories of his own potential abduction. It doesn't work out, and in one of the film's few genuine moments, he expresses his dismay. "You hope that things are going to work out, and in my life, it's like it never does." He laughs, then sags into his seat and gazes at the floor. If the team behind They're Here had any real interest in the people they were covering, regardless of how they felt about the veracity of their claims, this would be what the movie is about: people cast adrift on their home planet, gazing at the stars and dreaming of — or perhaps even touching — something more. However, the shoddy craftsmanship and lack of focus in exploring their lives is a testament to how little the filmmakers were invested in what these men and women had to say. Steve and the rest deserved better than this. They're Here is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 in New York City. Rating: 1.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  The 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City remains the single deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history. In telling its story, it’s not hard to imagine a variety of approaches: a character study of the perpetrator, a slow-burn thriller, a procedural that details everything that went into its execution, even using this one case as an examination of the right-wing libertarian politics of the era. McVeigh studiously and stubbornly resists any of these. The result is a film that does not seem to have a single animating principle beyond having enough footage to make a feature-length movie. Timothy McVeigh, the man who planted the truck with the fertilizer bomb at the site, is played by Alfie Allen. He’s a disaffected Gulf War veteran, slowly radicalized by instances of government overreach that animated many in the 1990s (most notably, the sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge). He lives a quiet existence, but underneath his stoic exterior lies a man burning with passions that have long since congealed into something more hateful. At least, that’s probably the intent. Sadly, most of the insight into McVeigh as a person has to come from outside knowledge of the case because, as portrayed, he, the man, was a near-mute with no discernible personality traits beyond blankly looking into space. Perhaps Allen was the wrong choice for such a subdued role, but as written, there’s simply not much indication of how McVeigh views the world, how he connects with other people, or why the people in his orbit even stand to be in his company in the first place. It’s rare to walk into a biopic and walk out knowing less about the subject than before, but such is the case here. The film structures itself by detailing the inception of the bombing plan up through the day it goes off. To give credit where it’s due, at first, the slow, deliberate pace seems to evoke something like an S. Craig Zahler movie, giving a pronounced weight to something as simple as meeting a strange man at a gun show or being stopped by a police officer for speeding (well, simple for a white man). Unfortunately, setting itself before the bombing does mean there is no tension in any of the situations McVeigh finds himself in. As scenes where there is no danger and no information about the man is being revealed drag on and on, things quickly tip into tedium.  As a sort of fictional document on the process behind planning out such a deadly attack, the movie immediately compromises itself by inventing things whole cloth. A local waitress who takes an interest in McVeigh, an old man in federal custody facing execution for a hate crime who McVeigh visits in prison, a bewildering French-Canadian man looking to recruit McVeigh into a wider movement. One scene shows the man seemingly motivated to murder a Black man simply because he put on rap music in a jukebox bar; multiple scenes seem to go so far as to imply that there was a second bomber with him when he planted the bomb at the federal building.
Fidelity to real life is hardly a prerequisite in making a film like this, though it could be argued there’s a degree of responsibility being flouted in fabricating so much. More aggravating is that all these inventions amount to absolutely nothing. None of the interactions with these characters reveal anything more about McVeigh’s psyche that isn’t already evident: he’s cold, unsociable, and identifies with right-wing grievances of the time. The only thing all these people add is minutes to the run time. What’s most aggravating about the movie’s failure to do anything with this story is how fascinating it actually is. The Oklahoma City bombing was the culmination of years of right-wing extremist agitation about the government’s abuse of police power, a mind-boggling thing to imagine thirty years on with a conservative embrace of state-sanctioned violence. McVeigh himself was a true, passionate devotee, going so far as to end friendships over what he saw as great evils the government perpetrated within its borders and abroad. At least some of his agitations could even be said to be reasonable, even if his actions were not. This level of moral complexity, this snapshot of the time this story provides, the anger and animus of man at its center, is completely absent from this dull, soulless retelling. McVeigh ends with a flurry of news clips from the immediate aftermath of the attack. One, in particular, stands out: at what appears to be a demonstration of what a fertilizer bomb is capable of, a young woman smiles and laughs at the sheer power of the device, then slowly breaks down into heavy sobs as she realizes the horror of what it wrought. When the most emotionally stirring part of your movie is news footage from three decades ago, something has gone horribly wrong. McVeigh is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 in New York City. Rating: 1/5 Review by Daniel Lima  For the whole of human history, storytellers have explored and exploited the horror of isolation. Be it the lonely echoes of an empty home or the dark recesses in the midst of a vast wilderness, what the mind creates without the comfort of company is often vastly more terrifying than any monster or demon. What the mind creates is also more interesting than anything in The Damned, a period horror film that attempts to be an evocative, atmospheric descent into madness and comes up with nothing at all. Odessa Young plays a young widow in 18th-century Iceland, running a small fishing outpost completely cut off from the outside world in the cold winter months. As they slowly starve through an unsuccessful season, a large ship wrecks within sight of them. Electing not to lend help, the outpost soon finds itself haunted by a being out of old Norse legend, and the inhabitants begin to turn on each other. It is clear that The Damned will not win any awards for originality or screenwriting. From just this premise, anyone with a passing familiarity with modern trends in horror cinema knows exactly what to expect: a slow burn, quasi-supernatural threat that could be interpreted as a manifestation of guilt and trauma, completely within the characters' minds. To that end, the film never tips its hand fully one way or the other and so never allows itself space to distinguish itself from any number of other works, at least on a purely narrative level. This is not, by itself, such a big problem. A film like this lives and dies on the world it can build. On paper, that shouldn't be an issue here: with such a unique setting and a small ensemble forced to spend a lot of time in one location, there is ample opportunity to craft a rich, insular little community with fully fleshed-out characters.  Unfortunately, the immersive quality this breed of survival horror begs for is constantly kept at bay by conventional filmmaking form. The score constantly announces how the audience should feel and ruins the ambiance that the sound design should create on its own. The stark beauty of the Icelandic landscape should be an almost ironic backdrop for such a bleak tale, but the bland cinematography does nothing to capitalize on the grand expanse. Numerous cheap jump scares litter a film that should be all about a creeping sense of dread. All these minor flaws ultimately create a sense of artifice that breaks any semblance of naturalism.
Worse yet, however, is the characters. There are not many of them; they spend basically every moment of screentime with one another, and yet they are all utterly indistinguishable beyond one or two traits: the woman-in-charge, the love interest, the kid, the superstitious crone. These stock archetypes simply do not suffice in a film about the deteriorating mental states of its ensemble, where death is constantly waiting in the wings and would represent a staggering blow to a community without bodies to spare. By the end of the film, I found myself struggling to figure out why I should care what happens to any of these people. Ultimately, this speaks to why The Damned doesn't work. It's an atmospheric film with no sense of atmosphere, psychological horror with no minds to interrogate. It has nothing original to say about the state of the world and no themes to explore that haven't been tackled by a plethora of more engaging films. It's the kind of movie you forget about almost as soon as the credits roll. The Damned is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 in New York City. Rating: 1.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  In the 1990s, high-concept studio family films were all the rage. From expensive productions about dinosaur metropolises (of which there were somehow more than one) to humble tales of fathers putting their kids in blackface to fabricate an undiscovered African tribe, the decade was the golden age of weirdo movies that earnestly committed to their oddball premises, often to mixed but fascinating results. Though it may lack the polish of those films, Invaders from Proxima B feels very much in conversation with them, showing far more vision than the low-budget DTV dreck of today. Ward Roberts is the producer, director, writer, and — of course — the star of the film, playing both a loving family man who spends an unfathomable amount of time away from his wife and daughter and an alien creature on a mission to save the world. As the alien attempts to coerce the man into helping him, more people are drawn into the plot, and the hijinks and shenanigans quickly stack up in a comedy of errors. The first glimpse of life on Earth is a man stepping out of a van in the dead of night and walking quietly into a home, easing himself into place between a woman and child as they sleep under a “Welcome Home Dada!” banner in the living room in a single unbroken shot. There is no score communicating how the audience should feel; the lack of cuts maintains the stillness and serenity a scene like this calls for. There is deliberate attention paid to how the scene is framed and composed., emphasizing the coziness of the home and the closeness of the family. This is hardly the most complex example of visual storytelling, but it shows that this goes beyond a mere vanity project for Roberts. Where so much family fare today cuts corners on basic craft, there is a level of care here that gives time spent with the core trio — and even the alien — an emotional weight that grounds the film, even as it gets progressively sillier. Perhaps it’s more an indictment of contemporary filmmaking standards than an exemplary quality of Invaders, but the fact remains that the film looks as good as anything at this scale can look, and lacks the shagginess that often comes with such a meager production.  Where the film gets particularly ambitious is in its alien, portrayed here as an Oscar the Grouch-esque puppet with big bushy eyebrows and a Brooklyn accent (at least, I think it’s Brooklyn, do not correct me). Any use of puppetry or practical effects today is inherently captivating, providing a tactile feel that no level of CG can adequately replicate. Touches like the glowing residue he leaves behind, his impressively realized spacecraft, and even the crudely animated 2D effects give this a charm and energy that is incredibly compelling.
Of course, this is still obviously intended to be a showcase for Roberts’s skills as an actor, and he doesn’t disappoint. Through certain plot machinations, he is given ample opportunity to embody multiple characters and personalities, and he handles them all with a frankly surprising level of nuance. The rest of the ensemble is every bit as committed, regardless of how outlandish and outsized their roles are. This earnestness goes a long way in making the most cartoonish antics tolerable… which, unfortunately, gets to the heart of the movie’s one great flaw. Unfortunately, this is a family comedy that isn’t very funny. That isn’t too much of a problem at the start when the lowkey drama and the world-building around the alien take up a good amount of screen time. As the film goes on, those elements — the most interesting — begin to recede, and instead, new wacky characters take over the narrative in a most unwelcome way. They are, almost to a one, intensely aggravating, relying on being goofy rather than actually constructing jokes and gags. Add in some off-color jokes that seem at odds with the rest of the film, and by the time the credits roll, these characters have largely outstayed their welcome. Yet it’s hard to be too upset at Invaders from Proxima B. There is a genuine sense of passion and purpose here, which eludes films with budgets that astronomically dwarf it. Even at its worst, it maintains a focus and attention to craft that smooths over its roughest edges. Three decades ago, this could have been a studio project that overcame its most abrasive elements through the impressive production design that that level of funding allows for. As it stands, you could do far worse today. Invaders from Proxima B is now available on VOD. Rating: 3/5 |