Week Ending 6/21/24
If I believed in superstitions and jinxes, I’d be worrying about whether I screwed the Florida Panthers out of a Stanley Cup by confidently insinuating they were going to win after gaining a three-to-zero game advantage last weekend. Thankfully, I don’t. Them losing two straight is no fault but their own … and that of the Edmonton Oilers finally waking up. Tonight’s tilt is going to be crazy. If it goes to Game 7 on Monday? Even crazier.
Either way, I don’t see how Connor McDavid doesn’t win the Conn Smythe. Win or lose. Tonight or Monday. Maybe they give it to Sergei Bobrovsky or Sasha Barkov if Florida wins. Maybe. McDavid has simply willed his team back into this series—not to mention leading the playoffs in points before it started too.
And for those non-sports lovers out there: be glad this is probably the last I speak of hockey until October. It’s just that the series is still going, so I couldn’t really start any new shows. I restarted THE BEAR instead. Preparations for Season 3 next week.
“Dogs” remains an all-time great episode of television.
What I Watched:
FEDERER: TWELVE FINAL DAYS
(streaming on Prime)
The constant selling point that Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia’s documentary FEDERER: TWELVE FINAL DAYS is comprised of footage “originally meant to remain as home video memories for the family” does a lot to tell us that these are intimate moments of a sports legend closing the book on being a professional athlete. It also cannot help reminding us that home videos aren’t always feature-length-film-ready with the breadth of intrigue and drama one demands. This wasn’t a sudden decision. Roger Federer wasn’t blindsided. He came to this decision and set out a plan to announce it. He even supplied himself a venue for his self-curated “goodbyes.” We merely watch it unfold from the other side.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s an affecting look. Especially for someone who followed the entirety of his twenty-four-year career like me. There’s something nice about the closure that seeing these moments provides. Watching Federer nervously wonder if he should announce his retirement early because the press might have gotten a leak. Seeing his family (his wife Mirka and his parents were mainstays in the stands) share in the emotion is touching. And witnessing the interactions with his friends and rivals Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray—all of whom agreed to be there for his final match at the Laver Cup—is a testament to the culture he instilled and legacy he leaves behind.
Because while it’s nice in a completist sort of way to spend twenty minutes following Roger as his anxiety ramps up before pressing send on his press release, we aren’t really learning anything from the majority of the film. Yes, these moments are relevant, but perhaps better served as complementary pieces within a more robust piece about Federer’s entire career. This didn’t feel stretched beyond its capacity since I’m invested in the man and the sport, but I’m sure many who aren’t will wonder what the point of this all is. It doesn’t lean into the idolatry aspect to make it about celebrity or the tennis itself to make it about the sport. TWELVE FINAL DAYS is just a final press tour.
Where relevance does arrive, however, is the Laver Cup footage. To see how close Roger and Rafa are and to hear it put into words how their friendship, despite an intense rivalry, changed the atmosphere and dynamic of the locker is historically meaningful. Watching tennis in the late-1990s and early-2000s meant constantly hearing about bad blood, isolation, and fracturing between top players (not to mention the racism the Williams sisters endured on the women’s side). Younger players coming in and seeing how well the top two players in the world got along off-the-court meant something. Respecting the sport above trophies meant something. That’s what shines through most. The rest is solely for the fans.
- 6/10
THE FIRST OMEN
(streaming on Hulu)
Should we care about who Damien’s mother was in THE OMEN? Not really. Yes, the mystery intrigues once Robert Thorn opens her grave to find the skeletal remains of a dog, but the absence of a body is more in-line with the conspiratorial nature of a secret cabal of priests and nuns trying to manufacture the Antichrist than a legitimate backstory anyway. Let the Church be the child’s “mother.” Let the death and destruction in that birth’s wake seal the past away since Damien’s existence is ultimately about the future. Unless … there’s a way to start over.
I’ve never seen any of the sequels to Richard Donner and David Seltzer’s original film, so I cannot say whether Arkasha Stevenson’s foray into the origins of its story erases them or not. The ending here would have me believe THE FIRST OMEN does open an alternate branch from its conclusion (since the connection to Gregory Peck is made crystal clear), but that’s not to say the filmmakers couldn’t find a way to run parallel a la the SAW franchise’s penchant for retroactive revisionism. All we need to know now is that there’s merit in going back—if only to better flesh out the mythology behind Damien’s creation against the backdrop of an atheist-tinged rebellion against authority.
Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young novitiate, is unwittingly thrown into the middle of this conspiracy by way of a reunion with the priest who befriended her many years prior when she was an orphan. Now a cardinal residing in Rome (Bill Nighy’s Lawrence), he’s sent for Margaret to join him and take the veil in a new world far removed from the troubles of her upbringing. It should come as no surprise then that she takes a shine to the black sheep of the new orphanage she’s sent to work in. Seeing Carlita (Nicole Sorace) is like looking into a mirror and Margaret hopes she can steer her onto the correct path like Lawrence did her.
Enter Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), an excommunicated priest desperate to get his hands on Carlita’s records to see if the rumors of her unholy creation are true. Sister Silva (Sonia Braga) is accused of being part of the plan and, being the leading source of punishment for the girl, seems to fit the bill. But why would Margaret believe this man and his lunacy? Why would she risk throwing away her life to prevent something that’s impossible? Maybe a gruesome death here will give her pause as another over there sways her to the side of skepticism. The question is whether she’ll be strong enough to do something if the horror comes true.
Stevenson, Tim Smith, and Keith Thomas (from a story by Ben Jacoby) do well to work backwards from the start of THE OMEN and concoct a thriller worthy of its lasting success. Because we know it must end in Damien’s birth, their job becomes less about getting us there and more about distracting us with false starts and potential diversions. They deal in duality as a result: reality and imagination, secularism and religion, predecessors and successors. The twists and turns are hardly shocking (everything is drawn up quite intentionally with zero room for ambiguity since the mirroring is cemented so early), but the film doesn’t ever pretend they should be. They’re less for our benefit than that of the characters.
Free is very good in the lead role. I hope she isn’t being typecast as a result of SERVANT, but there are obviously a lot of parallels that make it seem her performance there definitely helped. There’s a moment later on that’s trying to harness some of the energy Isabelle Adjani gave to POSSESSION too, but Stevenson and company do well to keep things more subdued to match the Donner film despite a desire to perhaps increase the gore factor fifty years later. Ineson, Braga, and Nighy ground things further with their stern yet calm tone steering Margaret towards the darkness and the light, letting her choose which path to follow once the facts are made clear.
- 7/10
HUMMINGBIRDS
(limited release; POV on July 1 at 10pm/9C; streaming through September 29 on pbs.org and the PBS App)
“Last one there is a Republican!” gets screamed twice during Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía 'Beba' Contreras’ autobiographical documentary HUMMINGBIRDS. That’s where their heads are living as non-conforming, border-town-residing, Mexican immigrants (one having crossed over while still in the womb and thus an American citizen while the other lives under the threat of deportation as an illegal seeking a visa) in Laredo, TX. It speaks to the fearlessness of today’s youth having everything to lose and still being loud and proud within an environment overrun by border patrol and Christo-fascist white nationalists. Having each other allows them the courage to be themselves.
Billed as their “last summer together,” the film never makes mention that they’re aware of this fact. Beba awaits visa status and Silvia talks about wanting to leave so they can become better educated in how to return and use their activism to spark change in their hometown, but the pair are mostly just living these days with abandon. They’re committing “light” crimes, flipping the bird to anyone who drives by, and causing a ruckus at Bingo. The opening scene supplies the best sense of the energy to come as Silvia and Beba lie atop a car laughing about the stars. Why is that meaningful? Because we soon discover it isn’t their car once the alarm begins to blare, forcing them to jump off and run away.
Conversations span memories and stories of their border crossings and deportations. There’s talk of clandestine journeys to San Antonio for an abortion and rough familial lives causing them to comment that their friend’s tarot reading of past trauma could pretty much work for anyone they know. Neither really got to be a child thanks to the ever-present responsibility of helping to raise siblings in single-parent homes while struggling to find ways to make money—especially when Beba can’t legally find work at all. But no matter how dark and hopeless their recollections prove, these Gen Z-ers always find a way out to start laughing and cause havoc again.
It’s an interesting project since Silvia and Beba aren’t doing it alone. Despite both always having their phones out filming, the lens from which we’re viewing arrives courtesy of a third party. Enter Jillian Schlesinger and Miguel Drake-McLaughlin as co-directors and supporters of the lead duo’s vision upon reaching out to collaborate after seeing Silvia’s short OCEAN. The feature was planned out in 2018 (lists of places and events to capture in hopes of including) and shot in 2019 with as spontaneous and electric a vibe as possible via those constraints. Maybe the camera’s presence therefore inherently infers upon their “performances,” but neither the candor nor the fun is ever compromised. And it looks great too.
- 7/10
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
(VOD & Digital HD)
Writer/director Rose Glass is proving to be a name you shouldn’t ignore. I may not have outright loved either of her features, but both are legitimately unforgettable works of singular vision. SAINT MAUD was a very good debut capped off by a genuinely great ending and LOVE LIES BLEEDING arrives as a great movie that just can’t quite stick its landing. While it delivers a perfect narrative conclusion, I must question its package considering its darkly surreal happily ever after mustn’t be so outlandishly drawn. Glass (and co-writer Weronika Tofilska) seems to want to recapture the lightning in a bottle of the duality born from SAINT MAUD’s finale. It just doesn’t quite work here.
The road there is fantastic, though, with an affecting romance and neo-noir sensibilities. Lou (Kristen Stewart) is at its center, stuck working a dead-end job in a dead-end town so as not to leave her sister (Jena Malone’s Beth) alone. We see the bruises on Beth’s face the first time we meet her and hear the animosity in Lou’s reaction to an FBI agent asking about her father (Ed Harris’s Lou Sr.). These sisters cope with the cesspool of toxic masculinity, juiced muscles, and gunpowder that surrounds them very differently and, with their mother gone, Lou takes it upon herself to protect Beth from the men in their life.
That’s when Jackie (Katy O'Brian) arrives. A woman who’s familiar with living a dead-end life herself, she’s chosen escape. Looking to compete in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, Jackie decides to stop in this town and make some money while putting in her final preparations. While a job is supplied by Dave Franco’s sleazeball JJ, the local gym is provided by Lou. Cue a whirlwind love affair wherein Lou also starts provides a place to stay … and steroids. Just as she’s listening to self-help cassettes explaining how cigarettes are poison in order to quit smoking, Lou begins pushing a different substance on her new beau.
The stage is therefore set for chaos once Lou’s criminal past inevitably collides with Jackie’s rage-fueled present. One crime leads to another until tough truths and anxiety-riddled plans threaten the couple’s bond. And soon the lines between complicity and responsibility blur. Has Jackie been using Lou and her family? Has Lou Sr. been using her? Has Lou? Add the looming FBI presence with the nosy infatuation of Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) and the walls start to close faster and faster. Suddenly the woman who seemed in control (Jackie) isn’t and the one who seemed trapped (Lou) is fully in command for, perhaps, the first time ever.
Stewart and O'Brian are both excellent in these roles. The romance is palpable, but so too is the impending doom once guilt and fear set in. Glass does well to color things with a nightmarish sheen via close-up shots of Jackie’s muscles expanding a la THE HULK and some truly wild dream sequences, but there’s also a really fun strain of black humor throughout—mostly on behalf of Lou constantly being put out and made to solve crazy problems for other people. That tonal path may take over too much for my taste by the end, but I can’t deny the climax isn’t memorable as a result. Glass isn’t making mainstream films. She’s taking big swings and I hope she never stops.
- 8/10
THE OMEN
(streaming on Hulu)
I remember the decapitation death vividly from my first time watching Richard Donner’s THE OMEN. Only bits and pieces otherwise. So, the fact that it all came flooding back as I viewed it now almost three decades later is a testament to the filmmaking burrowing its way inside my brain regardless of my ability to consciously hold onto the details.
Wild to read that Donner wanted to keep the film vague as far as whether Damien (Harvey Stephens) was truly the cause of all the deaths (in Satan’s name) since so much of the finished piece’s success lies in the choice (screenwriter David Seltzer’s original intent) to make it irrefutable. The dogs are crucial to this—especially the cemetery scene and its apparently out-of-the-way, hasty burial plots meant to be forgotten despite spending the money and effort to etch giant stone markers. Satan is ever present through them and Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw).
Gregory Peck is great casting as the father precisely because of his legacy as Hollywood’s most famous hero. We need a man who would never do what is being asked of him in this role so that the choice to ultimately do it hits with the necessary weight. David Warner is great too, but special mention goes to Lee Remick as Damien’s mother. Her gradual shift from doting to repulsed is unforgettable. This character is experiencing the truth that Peck’s Robert denies being told. She is enduring the evil building around her son and is desperate to escape it.
I love that the score won an Oscar since it’s so dated and overbearing. For a film that prides itself on holding back with the violence and gore to keep things more thriller than horror, the music cues want to bludgeon us to the point of comedy. But that being the most egregious “product of its time” detail of the whole only proves the film’s lasting power. And with a brilliant final shot really driving home the “Antichrist rising from the sea of politics” theme that’s conversely aged like fine wine, I’m sad they ever decided to make a sequel.
Via Letterboxd - 7/10
THELMA
(in theaters)
Thelma Post (June Squibb) isn’t ready to relinquish her autonomy yet. Her daughter (Parker Posey’s Gail) and son-in-law (Clark Gregg’s Alan) would love to get her into an assisted living center so they don’t have to worry, but her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger) refuses to let them force the issue. Yes, Thelma is over ninety years old and only has about three friends left (despite thinking she knows every senior citizen she passes on the street), but she remains spry enough to walk to the post office if necessary. She’s even learned how to use the scroll bar on her computer.
Inspired by writer/director Josh Margolin’s own grandmother (who we get to see via home video footage as a mid-credit sequence), THELMA looks to show us just how independent this nonagenarian truly is once she falls victim to a scam. Thinking that Daniel was calling from jail, she follows the instructions given to her on the phone and mails ten thousand dollars cash to a PO Box in Van Nuys. Devastated by what happened on its own, hearing Gail and Alan use the flub as a reason to finally move her from her home becomes the kick-in-the-pants she needs to reclaim what’s hers … no matter the cost.
What follows isn’t necessarily the action thriller you might be expecting, but Margolin does a wonderful job spoofing those expectations to deliver the sort of action thriller a ninety-four-year-old actor can handle. We’re talking pulse-pounding covert maneuvering through a maze of fallen lamps in a lamp store. The death-defying evasion tactics of the dreaded pop-up advertisement. And, of course, the uncertain mortal peril of falling without the ability to get back up. Margolin and Squibb’s spin on well-worn genre tropes proves so wholesome that they were able to get away with a PG-13 rating despite three f-bombs. You cannot keep this granny down.
Alongside Thelma’s central adventure (helped by the late Richard Roundtree as her old friend Ben) to take back what’s hers from Malcolm McDowell’s “villainous” Harvey is also a sort of twenty-something coming-of-age for Daniel. While she’s scooting across mattresses to steal firearms, he’s falling apart. Thelma is ready to get herself hurt to prove she’s still in charge of her faculties as Daniel is letting the malaise of a quarter-life crisis stunt his capacity to grow. In many ways, this experience is giving him the chance to learn what Ben and Thelma didn’t until too late: that sooner or later you must take care of yourself. Just don’t forget to also ask for help along the way.
Both Thelma and Daniel being on their own islands allows Posey and Gregg to have fun as overbearing parents and children. It leads to dual chases as Thelma looks for the money while they look for her around many of the same places so that supporting players like Starey Gary (David Giuliani) and Rochelle (Nicole Byer) and Colin (Quinn Beswick) can create a bridge with one-offs like poor Mona (Bunny Levine) more pointedly getting at the themes of mortality and independence swirling outside the familial anxiety. Add a couple good hearing aid gags and it’s impossible not to endear yourself to the shenanigans. As Daniel often says about Thelma, “She’s a tough old cookie.” He’s not wrong.
- 7/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
Love that THE FIRST OMEN only has one, pointed f-bomb so that if the MPAA felt like being lenient (that first birth scene probably earned an R on its own), it could have squeezed by with a PG-13. And I LOVE that they didn't water down its impact by adding more in after getting the R.
Nell Tiger Free dropping an f-bomb in THE FIRST OMEN.
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 6/21/24 -
THE BIKERIDERS at Dipson Amherst, McKinley, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
THE EXORCISM at Dipson Capitol; AMC Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
FACE OFF 7: ONE WISH at Regal Galleria
GHOST: RITE HERE RITE NOW (select times thru Sunday only) at North Park Theatre; Regal Transit & Galleria
GHOSTLIGHT at Dipson Amherst; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
“The line Dan walks is thin and you can feel that O'Sullivan wrote his trajectory through the character's voice to discover which side he'll fall at the same time he does.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
I AM: CELINE DION (select times thru Sunday only) at Regal Elmwood & Quaker
THELMA at North Park Theatre; Dipson Capitol; AMC Market Arcade; Regal Transit & Quaker
Thoughts are above.
Streaming from 6/21/24 -
KUNG FU PANDA 4 – Peacock on 6/21
TRIGGER WARNING – Netflix on 6/21
STEVIE VAN ZANDT: DISCIPLE – Max on 6/22
DIANE VON FURSTENBERG: WOMAN IN CHARGE – Hulu on 6/25
I AM CELINE DION – Prime on 6/25
DRAWING CLOSER – Netflix on 6/27
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
ANIMALIA (6/18)
THE BEAST (6/18)
“Seydoux is fantastic throughout, but even her performance can't help make that incel plotline feel as real or as dangerous as the [19th century Paris and present-day 2044 threads].” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
CHALLENGERS (6/18)
HANDLING THE UNDEAD (6/18)
“That's where the real unsettling nature comes in. Not just from the ways in which these corpses are reanimated as silent approximations of their former selves, but also in the sense that the audience knows what this scenario ultimately births.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
I USED TO BE FUNNY (6/18)
IF (6/18)
MARS EXPRESS (6/18)
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO | OPUS (6/18)
TRAMPS! (6/18)
WE GROWN NOW (6/18)
“As [two friends] arrive at an age where they can no longer ignore the injustices done to them while the city escalates the reach of its systemic racism, they must choose to either let the nihilism take hold or continue to dream.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
AGENT RECON (6/21)
BLACKWATER LANE (6/21)
COPA 71 (6/21)
“Along with these first-hand accounts, the footage of the games themself amazes too. Add some stunning still photography and a wealth of newspaper headlines and COPA 71 becomes an archival treasure trove of sports history.” – Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
WHAT REMAINS (6/21)
THE SPEEDWAY MURDERS (6/21)