I am currently sporting my Film Critic pants which means it's time for some capsule (short) movie reviews of four New Releases for the week of Friday, September 6th, 2024
It's kind of hard to believe that it's been 36 years since Tim Burton's macabre comedy "Beetlejuice" was released, and even harder to believe it took this long for a sequel.
When the first film came out, Tim Burton was still an unknown filmmaker who only had "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" under his belt, and his brand of dark, gothic, twisted sweetness had yet to become corporate and cliched.
Michael Keaton was basically a smart ass comic actor who was still "Mr. Mom," "Johnny Dangerously," and the lovable pimp from "Night Shift" to most people.
No one really knew who Winona Ryder was, and if you weren't a huge "SCTV" fan, you probably had no idea who Catherine O'Hara was either.
Now though, all these people are megastars/legends with incredible credits, hotly followed personal lives, and are as well-known as anyone can get in Hollywood. So, the focus and interest are hugely magnified with the release of this sequel.
Not to mention that the original is now a beloved classic that has spawned toys, merchandise, a Saturday morning animated series, and a Broadway musical. Oh yeah, the titular character has become one of the most beloved perennial Halloween costumes ever.
Anyway, it's back, and the pressure is on. Did Burton live up to the work he did in 1988? Is Keaton as manic and funny? Does Ryder continue to exude magical goth-loveliness? Are the ridiculous animated creatures and worms back? How about the shrunken head dudes?
And will we hear the Banana Boat Song again?
The answer to all those questions is Yes...sort of.
I'm not going to go into the many (too many!) threads of the plot here, but the Deetz family (with additions played by the outstanding Jenna Ortega and the hilarious Justin Theroux) returns to the town of Winter River for the funeral of the family's patriarch, and all hell breaks loose.
There are subplots involving a dead boyfriend (Arthur Conti, who eerily sounds EXACTLY like Jeff Goldblum), a vengeful ex-wife/ghost (Monica Bellucci, lovely, creepy and quite good), a dead actor who thinks he's a cop because he played one on TV (Willem Dafoe, who is clearly having a blast), and even more needless complications that all lead to a midnight wedding that features an almost ten-minute musical number choreographed around Richard Harris' epic song "MacArthur Park."
It is obviously very, very crowded and the script could use a few trims, but overall, this is a pretty terrific return to the style, tone and weirdness of the original. Keaton is still a marvel in the title role and Burton's endlessly creative imagination is on full display throughout most of the running time.
There are MANY awesomely gross and gory gags that push the "PG-13" rating to the limits, several head-scratching scenes of a surreal nature, and some wonderfully tasteless uses of cinematic technique that echo the kind of stuff that Burton has been doing beautifully for decades.
We get multiple visits to the afterlife, including uproarious and twisted scenes in death's Waiting Room, a tour of the work environment populated by the Shrunken Head Guys in which Beetlejuice is the supervisor (Bob rules, by the way), and the stop-motion-double-headed sandworms make an appearance too.
Despite being overstuffed, this is still fun and dark stuff that is, at times, brilliant, especially during the final fifteen minutes or so when the insane musical number takes over.
I'm not sure if a younger generation is going to go along with an extended sequence dedicated to a long novelty record from the early 70s, performed by a pompous Irish actor, but hell, I was totally on board, and I loved it.
Add to that a final sequence that uses Pino Donaggio's magnificent main title from Brian DePalma's "Carrie" and you have one happy dork - ME. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
2) THE THICKET
Directed by the very interesting Elliot Lester (whose films "Aftermath" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and "Sleepwalker" are definitely worth a look) this is a pretty decent western, based on a book by Joe R. Lansdale, that is highlighted by some terrific performances.
After his sister is abducted by a violent killer known as Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis), a boy hires a bounty hunter named Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage) to put a group together and search for the stolen girl and bring her home.
There are other things that happen in the film and, like "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," these things distract from the focus of what is interesting. It feels like screenwriter Chris Kelley wanted to include pretty much everything from Landale's book and the result is a film with way too many characters and way too much plot.
When the film focuses on Cut Throat Bill and Reginald Jones it absolutely soars, and that is because of the truly great performances by Dinklage and, especially, Lewis, who is remarkable here.
It's gorgeously shot and well edited, it builds to a nice climax, and as Westerns go, you could do A LOT worse (Kevin Costner's "Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1" anyone??), but the only time this thing really jumps off the screen is when Dinklage and Lewis are on screen. Luckily, they are on screen enough to recommend this moody little genre piece. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Shaun Peterson's at times fascinating, at times frustrating documentary uses interviews with historians, never-before seen photographs, and modern reenactments to examine Abraham Lincoln's intimate and romantic relationships with men throughout his life.
It mainly focuses on Lincoln's relationships with four men (Billy Greene, Joshua Speed, Elmer Ellsworth, and David Derickson) to begin with, and soon becomes a widely scoped examination of the history of sexuality and fluidity in America. It also looks at the profound differences between the sexual mores of the nineteenth century and today.
The Lincoln scholars, history professors and sexual experts interviewed here provide a lot of food for thought, and the film is well paced and professionally put together.
My main issues are with the political agenda that sometimes gets in the way of the history, and the awkward and sometimes silly actor reenactments. Personally, I have always had problems with the use of reenactments in documentaries in general, and their inclusion here is particularly distracting. - ⭐️⭐️
In the latest horror film from the wonderful studio A24, Brandy Norwood and Andrew Burnap play a young couple who are about to have a baby and are suddenly thrust into a situation in which they must take in the husband's estranged stepmother (Kathryn Hunter) who, may or may not be an out-of-control disciple of evil.
So, I love it when a movie comes out of nowhere and pretty much blows me away, and that's exactly what happened here. This wildly unhinged, twisted, fantastically disgusting black comedy turns out to be one of the best films of 2024.
It's part gross horror film, part smart social satire, part actor showcase, and it all works magnificently. A perfect companion piece to films like "Rosemary's Baby," "mother!" and this year's amazing "The First Omen," as a paranoid study of impending motherhood.
It is also perhaps the best Nightmare Mother-In-Law Movie ever made, anchored by what I think is the best performance by an actress I've seen all year, given by the extraordinary Kathryn Hunter.
Smartly written and brilliantly directed by Sam and Max Eggers this is an unapologetic and brazen exercise in excess that will have you laughing one second, gagging the next, and thinking the entire time.
On a technical level this film is top-notch in every category, from cinematography to score (which in blatant fashion, very cleverly and thematically uses the first six notes of "White Christmas" as its recurring tune), to each great performance.
I don't think I've laughed harder at a film this entire year, and I certainly haven't been so thoroughly entertained by a movie like I was by this one in a long, long time.
I'm not sure how this movie is going to do at the box office, or how the public will react, because I saw "The Front Room" in a completely empty theater at an opening day matinee.
My hunch is that a huge crowd on a Saturday night will have an absolute blast watching this thing, laughing their asses off, cheering, and being completely grossed out by the insane antics unfolding on the screen.
I had an unbelievably great time with this jewel of a movie, and I can't wait to see it again.
I really, really hope that A24 puts some money behind a campaign to get Hunter a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, because she is amazing in it.
The biggest surprise of the year so far. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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