Review: The Exorcism

Heading into The Exorcism, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a follow-up to Russell Crowe's recent The Pope's Exorcist. There Crowe played a real-life priest and occasional exorcist; here he's playing an actor who's just been cast as an exorcist in a remake of an iconic movie involving priests and demonic possession. The movie's real title is never mentioned. Guess these days there's a fair few of them to choose from.

Anthony Miller (Crowe) flushed his career and his family down the toilet years ago. Now he's sober and he's trying to get both back. His career through a comeback role as an exorcist, his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) by having her stay with him after she was kicked out of boarding school.

Miller is a troubled man, and his childhood experiences as an altar boy have left him skittish around the church. But he needs the gig, and despite a lot of reluctance from the money men, the director (Adam Goldberg) signs him for the role - though his motivational methods might be a little too effective in stirring up Miller's past.

Oh yeah, and the main reason why Miller got the role was because the big name they previously cast died. On set. While going through his lines for a scene where he confronts a demonic force. 

Now Miller's sleepwalking, lights are falling from the ceiling, his performance is bad in an increasingly unsettling way, and the whole situation is giving off a very creepy vibe. Is it merely Miller's personal demons brought back by the pressures of work, or will Lee and the film's religious advisor Father Conor (David Hyde Pierce) have to face down a demon of the more literal kind?

We all know how exorcism movies work, and while this (which was filmed back in late 2019) is initially a slow burn, it does eventually get around to delivering the sudden soundtrack stings and casual blasphemy. A more interesting development here is having Miller be the source of a few of the better jump scares; one of Crowe's big strengths in this stage of his career is that he can just as easily be the good guy or the bad, and this makes good use of that ambivalence.

Director and co-writer John Joshua Miller is the son of Jason Miller, who played the priest who goes out the window in the original Exorcist. He brings a satisfying level of dread to a number of individual scenes, which helps gloss over the way the overall story doesn't really hold together. Presumably "I was possessed by a demon" is a legitimate defense when it comes to being charged with murder in the US justice system.

There's next to nothing new here (somewhat intentionally, considering the classic its riffing on), but Crowe drags the whole thing over the line through sheer force of will. It's the kind of film where it feels like everyone else turned up just because they knew he'd be there; Sam Worthington, who basically has an extended cameo as Miller's adoring co-star, almost certainly signed on just to spend time across from Crowe. And who could blame him? Even when Crowe's deliberately acting badly, he's still good.

So yes, the story loses focus here and there, and a few scenes stretch credibility beyond breaking point - like the time when someone goes full Satanic crabwalk during filming and the entire crew doesn't quit on the spot. And yet: the power of Crowe compels you. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Just look how far the Bad Boys have come. When they first burst onto our screens in a wave of legally dubious carnage, the buddy cop dynamic between Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) was your typical loose cannon vs anxious guy with something to lose. Now, well over 25 years later, they're both just too old for this shit. And in Bad Boys:Ride or Die, the shit has once again hit the fan.

Even a franchise this free-wheeling knows action doesn't mean much when there's nothing at stake. So first, some character development: Mike's settling down and getting married to Christine (Melanie Liburd), so he's finally got something to lose. Marcus just had a heart attack on the dance floor where a vision of their cranky dead boss Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) told him it's not his time to die, so now he thinks he's invulnerable. As role reversals go it's no Freaky Friday, but it'll do.

Speaking of the late Captain Howard, he's the big plot driver this time around. Seems he's been framed by the evil cartel from the last film, angering his devoted US Marshall daughter (Rhea Seehorn) who doesn't want to believe it. In reality, he was secretly investigating corruption inside his department. It turns out the only way to clear his name is for the Boys to go on the run, team-up with Mike's son and cartel killer Armando (Jacob Scipio) and trash half of Florida.

Returning directors Adil & Bilall (they took over the franchise from Michael Bay with Bad Boys For Life, maintaining his hyperbolic style in a near-seamless fashion) know that too much is never enough when you're dealing with the Bad Boys. It's probably not humanly possible for someone to enjoy everything going on here, but with so much going on you're bound to find something you like.

Probably not the comedy though, which rarely gets above painful until the second half and even then relies an awful lot on the goodwill Lawrence and Smith bring to their characters. And while it's tempting to consider this a last chance for Smith to redeem himself after his Oscar antics, his laying low since then has largely done the hard work for him - and here he's often surprisingly subdued, while Lawrence takes full advantage of Marcus's fearlessness to crank things up.

And making some noise is probably a good idea, because this is so over-stuffed (old characters are back! New characters are important! The action is dizzying!) eventually it starts to take on the relentless feel of the engine drone from one of the often-present helicopters - but like a trip on one of those copters, it's always a wild ride.

The big crowd-pleasing twist here is that Marcus' son-in-law Reggie (played by Dennis McDonald), who's been a one-minor-note-joke since Bad Boys II, finally gets to take out some trash on his own. If Mike and Marcus are getting too old to be boys, at least the next generation now get to be (equally lethal) men.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Mad Max movies falter when they slow down. It's a series built on speed; characters might talk about what they've lost, but the past is the past and they're hurtling through a future that's crumbling around them. Furiosa doesn't exactly slam on the brakes, but as a companion piece to 2015's Fury Road - which restarted the Mad Max franchise after close to three decades dormant - it's largely taking us to places we've already been.

Fury Road sketched in Furiosa's backstory. Taken from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child, she grew up in the Wasteland, rising to a position of power in the brutal Citadel run by Immortan Joe. This fills in the gaps, sometimes in ways that honor the franchise's tradition of full throttle storytelling, other times in ways more familiar to prequel fans.

The opening sequence where Furiosa (played as a child by Alyla Browne) is snatched, raced across the desert to the camp of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, hamming it up) then almost saved by her pursuing mother is a breathless, thrilling beginning. Things slow down when Dementus' horde stumble upon the Citadel and discover Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his familiar henchmen are no easy mark; warring tribes are slower and more crushing than speeding individuals, and while the violence we expect in the Wasteland continues, the storytelling shifts into epic mode, with alliances and sieges and betrayals.

Through this Furiosa (now played by Anna Taylor-Joy) comes of age, dodges one fate and embraces another. Hiding as a mechanic, she plans her escape; War Rig driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) becomes her mentor and her guide. Meanwhile, Dementus is proving an unstable element in the fragile ecosystem that sustains the Citadel. War is coming, and Furiosa's plans for escape will be overtaken by her desire for revenge.

Director George Miller hasn't slowed down with age. There's a number of good action sequences here, and one excellent one. But the breathless pace of the best of the Mad Max series is absent, and revisiting familar settings and characters means this often lacks the confronting weirdness the franchise is so good at. A fleeting static cameo from a familiar Road Warrior got a cheer; someone being dragged down into a desert sinkhole was a nice call back to the deadly sand dunes of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

But the limited settings also limits the film's horizons. At times the Wasteland almost threatens to become safe, a well worn path - though the physical setting for the hooning around (this was filmed in the Australian outback, whereas Fury Road was filmed in Africa) is more varied and striking than in the previous film, and used to better effect.

Taylor-Joy is more fevered and feral than Charlize Theron's Furiosa, a woman desperate to regain what she's lost. Burke plays a guide to what she'll become, a rare character with his head on straight; everyone else is ruthless or insane, preferably both if they want to survive, and Miller's retained his eye for uniquely Australian faces (a dusty musician Tim Rogers turns up early).

Fury Road was a relentless onslaught of escalating and outlandish action. This can't reach those heights; it's probably wise that it takes another path. At close to two and a half hours, it's an epic striving for a different kind of overload. If it doesn't fully succeed, it still goes hard enough to skid over the line.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Fremont

Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) is having trouble sleeping. She's an Afghan refugee - she was a translator for the US Army - who now lives in Fremont, California. She works in a fortune cookie factory, lives in a building with other refugees, eats alone at a restaurant where soap operas constantly play, and doesn't think she has PTSD. 

The rhythms of Donya's life are small ones, and Iranian-American director Babak Jalali's film takes its time immersing the viewer in them. The men around her are usually older and keep their distance, while her workmate and friend Joanna (Hilda Schmelling) has a lot going on. Donya's fine with keeping people at a remove.

The she pushes her way into the practice of Dr Anthony (Gregg Turkington) because she wants sleeping tablets. When he asks about her past and her situation, her facade doesn't exactly crack - and it isn't really a facade - but she does start to realise that she may need more out of life than the bare bones she's been gnawing on.

Meanwhile at the cookie factory, a major upheaval. The person writing the fortunes has died (as the boss says, "she was too old to be thinking about the future") and Donya takes on the job. Dr Anthony thinks this might be a way for her to express her thoughts and feelings, though she'll have to make them "cookie friendly". Taking his advice maybe a little too close to heart, she puts her phone number on a fortune and sends it out into the world.

Deceptively deadpan and shot in often striking black and white, it's a story both intimate and wide-ranging. Told in a minor key, there's big feelings and high stakes here if you look. Donya's blind shot at connection puts her job in jeopardy, while also bringing her in contact with Daniel (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White) and a world - or maybe just a slightly ajar door - of passion and romance.

Despite it's at times placid tone, the brutal mechanisms of our world grind away just out of sight. Donya doesn't explain her past, but the outline alone suggests horrors. Looked at one way, her job is repetitive and crushing, her life outside it threadbare. 

But there's solace and comfort there too, as sorting and packing cookies creates a soothing repetition. When she's offered the chance to be creative, she grabs it with both hands and uses it for her own gain. The company's too; who better to write cookie fortunes than a dreamer?

- Anthony Morris

Review: Civil War

Alex Garland's Civil War isn't titled Civil War 2 - which is what it technically depicts - or The Second American Civil War or anything like that, because it's not meant to be a prediction of a reality to come. In fact, it strenuously avoids anything in the big picture that could be mistaken for realism. The main military force is an alliance between Texas and California which okay, might happen. As for the actual causes of this civil war, they're never mentioned.

While some have praised the film's commitment to just dropping the viewer into the conflict and letting them figure it out, Garland doesn't really give the viewer enough information to figure anything out - which is a little ironic, considering all the main characters are journalists and at least one of the themes in this murky film is "how far should you go in your commitment to document the truth?" Turns out these guys will do pretty much anything to get the story, they just can't be bothered telling it to anyone.

So while the President (Nick Offerman, seen only briefly at the beginning and end of the film) is presented as a babbler disconnected from reality, well, name a recent President who wasn't. All we know of his political achievements is that he disbanded the FBI, messed around with the rules as far as drone strikes on American citizens, and had a third term. Sure, maybe he's a fascist dictator; maybe he disbanded the FBI because of its long history of abusing civil rights and ran for a third term because the country was already at war with itself. We don't know.

Not only do we have a conflict with no cause, we have a conflict that's clearly not designed to reflect current warfare. There are no drones; the US Navy must have decided to sit it out because one aircraft carrier parked outside Washington DC would have ended the war in about half an hour. Military technology is roughly on the level of the Vietnam War, or maybe Gulf War One: tanks, automatic weapons, rocket launchers, humvees.

The scenes of war we're shown are also generic. There are gun battles and refugee camps, armed guards at stores and looters hung and tortured. There's a mass grave, a sniper who seems to be shooting indiscriminately, a suicide bomber. These scenes are always effective and often chilling, but for a generation of viewers used to zombie movies and The Walking Dead, or just who've seen Spielberg's War of the Worlds, it's all pretty much what you'd expect.

Likewise, our lead characters are the kind of war correspondents that are familiar from wars gone by. These are photojournalists who still shoot on film; while there's one mention of an upload, and we're told there's no phone service, digital cameras don't seem to be a thing. Characters work for Reuters or "what's left of the New York Times"; nobody's posting pictures of war crimes on social media.

So the war is a metaphor; we have to look elsewhere for meaning. It's tempting to look at the characters: Lee (Kirsten Dunst) is a war-weary photographer, Joel (Wagner Moura) is her slightly more enthusiastic journalist buddy. They're planning to go to Washington DC to interview the President before his regime falls. Tagging along is fresh-faced newcomer Jesse (Cailee Spaney), who is just starting out as a photojournalist and who idolises Lee, and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a senior writer who is tagging along on what might be the last big story of his career.

There are some obvious moves here. Jessie is going to learn what it takes to make it, Lee is going to have to figure out if this is still what she wants to do with her life. Garland sketches all this stuff in off-handedly, though the performances are strong. It's tempting to suggest this is a film about the cost of being detached and the price you pay as an individual for journalistic detachment.

These are people able to dispassionately observe their own country tear itself apart, working the shutter of their cameras as their homeland dies in front of them. There's a cost to that, and as we get to the climax of the film some characters embrace that cost and others question it. But the film is barely interested in its characters as people; much of the film simply requires them to be observers, their own stories largely kept in the background.

What the film is more interested in is the end of the USA. The opening is the President getting ready to give a speech about how the separatists have been crushed, and the system as we know it is set to be restored. It's not until a few scenes later that we realise he's full of shit. The US government has lost the war, and everyone expects the President to be dead within weeks.

That conversation between journalists also sketches in the basic state of play across the nation; there's at least three separate factions out there, and only their hatred of the President and his forces is keeping them united. While the film as it progresses seems to be driving towards a firm conclusion, we've already been told that no end is in sight.

Everything we see in the film - constant lethal violence, rampant mistrust, an unending sense of threat behind every action - is now and for the foreseeable future the status quo in America. This explains why the war is so basic, so hand-to-hand: it's not about forces fighting for territory or resources, it's about a country where neighbour wants nothing more than to murder their neighbour.

What gives Civil War it's power - and despite its many flaws and flat patches, it does end up a powerful film - is that it ends up gleefully reveling in the disaster it portrays, a zombie movie that says we deserve to be eaten. The state of the nation is a nightmare, the film says, where friend has turned against friend, brother against brother. And the solution is to find someone to blame.

The final act of the film involves the storming of Washington and the White House, and it's easily the high point of the film. Garland kicks things into pure action mode as we follow a military unit (and our tag-along leads) as they fight their way into the war torn city, complete with monuments coming under fire. Civil War is seemingly about the importance of a media committed to objectivity, but the film itself only comes to life when it's reveling in the fruits of bias and division.

Going by the current state of US political discourse no doubt there's a large audience out there right now keen to see either their current or the previous head of state gunned down like a dog. The President here is kept so vague he could be from either party or neither; he's politically a blank slate, simply "The President".

Civil War says the desire for this kind of thing is a poison that will tear the country apart, and then it serves that poison right on up.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Late Night with the Devil

It's proof of the strength of its concept that Late Night with the Devil works as well as it does. Recreating antique television is a tricky job, and this often manages to be a weird mix of on-the-money and slapdash at the very exact same time. Without a note-perfect performance from David Dastmalchian at its heart, this would be little more than an interesting (and creepy) experiment; he's what makes this movie soar even as the talk show within it goes wildly off the rails.

That winning concept is a episode of a late-70s late night talk show, supposedly taken direct from recently discovered master tapes, in which a very special theme night goes horribly wrong. But first there's a documentary-style prologue to get us up to speed on both the era's Satanic Panic and the path to not-quite-success taken by host Jack Delroy, quickly bringing us to the point where a Halloween special featuring psychics, debunkers, and a young girl raised to be a demonic sacrifice who just might be possessed herself seems like a ratings winner.

Australian directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes do a great job with the look of the talk show. It's the kind of thing where you know there are probably flaws there somewhere, but it captures the overall vibe so well that you can forgive some dubious camera angles. But during the ad breaks we cut to "behind-the-scenes" black and white footage that doesn't make (technical) sense at all. It provides useful backstory and fills in some gaps, but it's basically shot like a modern film, the kind of footage they couldn't have taken at the time.

While these scenes are technically jarring, they do make sense (and work pretty well) if you forget all the "this was an actual event that happened" stuff and see this as a horror movie that just happens to take place in a television studio. Which is a reasonable way to look at things, even if it does impose a different set of limitations on the material. If you're not going to pretend it's a real episode of a real show, why bother filming 2/3rds of the film like it is?

Some of the other flaws are more understandable. Events come to a boil early on, followed by a stretch where not a lot overtly happens to further crank up the tension; the whole idea of putting in a big moment early on then letting the (boring) story play out for another half hour or more is so ingrained in current script writing that it's not so much a flaw as just another example of a trend.

But horror, more than any other genre in cinema today, remains one where film makers are encouraged to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks (before slowly sliding down, leaving a bloody trail behind). Audiences expect horror films to be an uneven collection of moments that work and scenes that fail; even slow-burn classics of the genre often have a couple of missteps we forgive them for.

Fortunately here, the good outweighs the bad. The fake show is convincing enough to provide a decent backdrop for the slow descent into nightmare, with just enough reversals to explain why people don't get the hell out of there (plus, as we're told multiple times, this is showbiz, and it's all part of the act). There's a nice variety of horror on display here as well, ranging from the creepy to the gory to the nastily brutal to a few surreal moments - though again, the enemy of terror is over-explanation, and this often spells things out that we already grasped through earlier insinuation.

There's one moment towards the end where the film shifts gears and a character finds themselves in a very different situation from everything that's come before. That "oh shit, they're really going there" realisation threatens to turn this from being merely pretty good into something truly special.

... and then they use that shift to fill in backstory rather than pile on the surreal horror. So close.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Monkey Man

 

Dev Patel's directorial debut Monkey Man was heading for a straight-to-streaming Netflix slot before Jordan Peele saw it and decided it was too good to bypass cinemas. It's not hard to see why. Directed with style and energy, it's the kind of full-bore experience that works best on the big screen. But too good for streaming? That depends what kind of streaming you're talking about.

In recent years it's become obvious that while at-home isn't the best venue for every film, there are certain genres that can thrive in the streaming environment. Romantic comedies might be having a comeback on the big screen, but that's building on years of re-introducing viewers to their charms via countless direct-to-streaming features. And action films, the kind of bruising, no holds-barred, relentless onslaughts of crippling violence that fans love to see? Streaming is where it's at.

Which is why it's for the best that Monkey Man has gone to cinemas first, because as far as action goes this is good - but not great. Some fights are effectively nasty; others threaten to bring back the much-loathed shaky-cam approach where "action" equals "keeping the camera moving so you can't tell what's going on". There are strong moments here, but there's just not enough of them for a film based around violent vengeance.

So what else does this have to offer? What initially seems like your traditional tale of roaring revenge as the Kid (Patel) inflitrates a luxury hotel built on drugs and prostitution then takes a swerve into the (slightly) mystical as the Kid finds himself rescued by a outcast group of local trans women and realises that the corruption and religious exploitation he's fighting against stretches far beyond his own personal suffering.

The Indian setting (the film was shot in Indonesia) is never quite as distinctive as it promises to be, but the often pointed political commentary provides some useful depth to the cartoony plot. Most recent action films seem eager to avoid having anything to say; this at least says something, and is a better film for it.

Patel himself makes for a strong lead. His tall, wiry physicality is used to good effect, especially early on when his desire for revenge is burning him up from the inside; later scenes, where he's a much more focused character, aren't as threatening as they should be.

As a mix of comic-book plotting (where the hero's first attempt at defeating the bad guys fails, so he has to go and regroup before trying again) and offbeat moments (the Kid's training montage is scored by a local musician while the trans women cheer on his sweaty shirtless antics), it's a good backbone for an action thriller. But once you look past the often flashy style, the thrills aren't quite there.

Patel stages some sequences effectively, but others rely more on energy generated with the camera than what we're seeing in front of it. There's a brief John Wick reference early on, which makes for a nice joke; it's also a reminder that those films were all about showcasing the physical skill of the performers by filming the action clearly and simply. It's a lesson Patel might want to take to heart next time he gets behind the camera.

- Anthony Morris