Wolf Man

Wolf Man is good and spooky.

We follow Blake as he takes his family to visit his childhood home, an isolated place.

It’s gorgeous there. During the day, vibrant greens ground us as a sort of steady air blankets us, and we just feel like everything is going to be OK. But at night, as the locals and natives know, there are creatures, sicknesses to be careful of. Well, get ready for a long night, folks.

This is a high-quality production all around. The writing and pacing build steadily and believably, and the father’s actor does a great job of portraying his struggles to do right by his family.

The sound and visuals are phenomenal, used just enough and used creatively to open our minds. Good and spooky indeed.

Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn has a premise made to catch our attention. Too bad the movie can’t hold it.

The idea is that a father and daughter accidentally kill a unicorn. They do this on the way to a secluded estate, at which the father will have a sort of job interview with a wealthy family that owns a pharmaceutical company.

If you can believe it, that’s about as believable as the movie gets. The characters are one-dimensional (evil tycoon and spoiled son; emo daughter of over-worked father, etc.). Any time there is about to be a moment of genuine communication, something interrupts; this happens far too much to be realistic. And with landscape visuals that are computer-generated in a bad way, we’re taken out of this story a lot.

The comedic acting does range from good to great, though; kudos to the spoiled son, the calmly conniving mother, the bald butler. And the direction can be smart and subtle (for example, when the camera focuses on the mother walking over a printout of the daughter’s, it’s letting us know how the mom thinks, even if it seems like she was approaching sweetly). But we’re also given too many quick cuts of nothing actions to transition between scenes. It feels like the director knows the writing isn’t great, and is trying desperately to keep our attention.

To reveal any other plot points will spoil the movie, but if you use your imagination, you can make a pretty good guess about where this story will go.

Last Days

Last Days might be about a religious missionary, but it has all the intensity of an international thriller.

The based-on-a-true story follows John as he tries to understand why God made him. It turns out that this is not an easy question for him to answer, and so, the moviemakers whisk us around the planet, trying to keep us up with John’s flurried brain, and revealing surprises about his family, his religion, and the cultures that he encounters.

It really gets interesting when John decides that the best way for his talents to be used is to convert an indigenous tribe to Christianity—a tribe that has, to date, killed every single outsider that it has encountered.

Whatever you think of John’s choice, he is portrayed brilliantly by his actor. It’s hard not to be stung by the flames of brazen naiveté and soul-torturing confusion the radiate off of him; hard not to feel for that entreating smile.

The bad? There’s plenty. The movie spends a bit too much time with John. When we see his family, the scenes are mostly depthless. And worst of all, the writing is full of cheap one-liners.

Each of those things takes us out of the experience, but thankfully, we are always drawn back in. The thriller-style structure of the thing, John’s acting, and the best part—that the movie asks us to consider pernicious ideas—make up for all the bad.

Have you ever really thought about how love, funneled through an organization, can destroy entire cultures? Do you realize what immigrants must lose, over and over again, to survive in a new reality; and how their kids might feel lost as a consequence?

28 Years Later

28 Years Later follows a young person as they go out into a zombified world for the first time. The movie can be thrilling and scary and hardcore, though what makes it truly engaging is that it has just as much deep drama as that other stuff.

There are rules on the home island—a seemingly safe, communistic place which has survived for 28 years since the zombie virus first infected humans on the mainland. And so Spike, as a right of passage, must now go to that mainland and understand reality. Mom is sick and stays home, but experienced Dad joins.

It’s hard for our heart not to race as we take those first steps . . . or for any of the many firsts we’ll experience. Brilliant moviemaking amplifies this. Is that the wind, or is some thing exhaling? Nighttime cut scenes blast our senses like red seizure dreams, while during the day we march to a different sound—though, maybe, it’s a similar mania.

This one is just fun. It is no marathon of gore, but a compelling blend of past and present, good and bad, seriousness and camp.

Where the Wind Comes From

Where the Wind Comes From has veins of sadness reaching from its head to its toes. You’d think those might weigh it down, but really, they help the movie become the tender, mature thing that it is.

It follows Alyssa and her friend Mehdi, two young adults in economically-(and for them, socially-)depressed Tunisia, each of whom is upset for different reasons. As time passes (i) we learn why and (ii) Alyssa discovers an opportunity for the two to maybe change their lives and rise above this place.

Queue the road trip! The (platonic) chemistry between our leads works its magic, uplifting us often, and reminding us of the exciting, desperate hope that can categorize youth. The writing injects Alyssa—rough around the edges in red, more tricksy and impatient and perhaps ready to give up—and Mehdi—more by the book, cautious in blue—into situations that illustrate problems big and small, but it’s never an overdose.

Very few of the lines do feel forced, as do a couple of pans of the countryside, but most of the movie watches real. You begin to root for these two, for the world to not be so harsh. For the first time in a long time you listen intently to stories that a loved-one tells you about where the wind comes from, for example, the sort of bedtime story that you need to hear in that moment to relax, because sometimes, the bad dream is something that you’re already awake in.

What’s the point? Photo Credit: Frida Marzouk

Bubble & Squeak

Bubble & Squeak is absurd and a total head-scratcher. We might take something from it.

You’ll know within the first five minutes whether this is a movie you’ll want to finish. This first scene has Declan and Delores, on their honeymoon, being interrogated . . . in a country that has outlawed cabbages, because its society has, for several reasons, deemed cabbages an affront to all that is good.

If you’re still with me, there’s more: Most of the dialogue is brief, even hollow-feeling. People talk more about cabbages or the worst desserts ever or job titles than they do about real life problems—for example, the predicament in which they find themselves.

And so we follow Delores and Declan (played brilliantly) as they run from the police (played absurdly) through the forest, with line after line of silly nothingness echoing through our brains. Mix that together with locals and strange events, and we have an intriguing story.

If you enjoyed the first five minutes then you’ll appreciate the movie as a light frolick—until the end, when the snowball has that been growing is revealed. If until then you had laughed at all at the silliness, then now, you just might cry at the beautiful, bittersweet depth.

Maybe Bubble & Squeak is a movie I don’t understand. But maybe, maybe it’s a good-natured wink; a refreshing reminder that although life is absurd, if we stop fighting it, we might have time to hear ourselves, learn something, and create something good on our own terms. Pretty great takeaway from something that watches easy.

DJ Ahmet

DJ Ahmet is the one where a sheep walks into a dance party. What a brilliant, brilliant movie.

It follows Ahmet, a good-natured teen who’s just trying to bring some joy to his currently dull life. This can be hard in his North Macedonian village—a tuft of sheep fuzz laid on one of countless hills, hills so vast that they serve as constant reminders: without each other, we cannot survive.

It’s actually a joyous movie, though there’s plenty that dampens the mood. Ahmet’s mother has passed, leaving a vacuum that his father’s coldness and his younger brother’s traumatized silence cannot fill. Each day Ahmet faces reality, milking the sheep and missing school to support the family.

And yet . . . he finds moments to listen to some bangers—true dance music gold. He’s sure to nurture his younger brother and interact, somehow, with that one girl who also seems to value this music/dance stuff.

At the risk of drowning in superlatives here, every aspect of the moviemaking seems perfect. The writing wisely balances lingering emotion with pops of pure joy or silliness. Editing smoother than silk never gets in the way of the story and the expertly-chosen cast acting expertly. The direction is oh-so subtle and smart, letting the whipping wind do all the talking one time, tantalizing us with the random lighting from fireworks another. And the sound, the music? Driving; wonderful; fun!

DJ Ahmet is the way. Have heart, spend time with your people, and make time to let it all go with some music once in a while.

Big hills big sky small people.