Movie review by Greg Carlson

Aired just one time on CBS the evening of November 17, 1978, “The Star Wars Holiday Special” was the first sanctioned, long-form Luscasfilm media extending the cultural phenomenon of the blockbuster movie directed by George Lucas. Over the years, the show’s reputation spread through word of mouth and bootleg VHS dubs sold at sci-fi conventions until the internet made access easier. Filmmakers Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak celebrate the 45th anniversary of Life Day with “A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened,” a feature-length, behind-the-scenes documentary dive into the factors that would shape the mythology and fuel the infamy of one of the most ill-conceived variety productions in the era of “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special” and “The Archie Situation Comedy Musical Variety Show.”

While it can charitably be said that “Disturbance” is mostly for fans of “Star Wars” and/or movie and television history, the subtitle of the doc represents real truth in advertising. The account of the origins, execution, and reception of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is so painstakingly communicated, the viewing experience never approaches the giddy head-trip or eye candy of Cinefamily’s “Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars,” a far more satisfying assemblage of scraps and spare parts salvaged from the bowels of the period’s seemingly endless supply of embarrassing cross-promotions and tie-ins.

The movie’s greatest deficit, however, is the altogether obvious and narrow panel of talking heads clamoring to uncork comic quips and zingers between the historical recollections of the survivors who actually worked on the show. While not likely a deliberate sin of omission, Coon and Kozak ignore the diversity of the global fanbase; women and people of color are as scarce here as they were in the original film. Celebrity guests include Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Seth Green, Gilbert Gottfried, Taran Killam, and others. The collective impact of their sizable screen time nudges the package in the direction of something like VH1’s “I Love the ‘80s.”

Far more valuable and less annoying is the participation of various team members who contributed – directly or indirectly – to the special’s creation. Folks like Steve Binder, Miki Herman, Leonard Ripps, Bruce Vilanch, and Bob Mackie end up softening some of the expected and longstanding ridicule aimed at the special. It is within this framework that “Disturbance” finds some success. Coon and Kozak skillfully arrange these anecdotes to contextualize the big picture question “How Did This Get Made?” via a savvy understanding of Lucasfilm Vice President of Advertising, Publicity, Promotion and Merchandising Charley Lippincott’s gift for concocting ways to keep the “Star Wars” machine chugging along.

As a result of the anything-goes mentality of the moment (we are smartly reminded how difficult it can be to even recall the Star Wars universe when it was brand new) and the lack of any direct, creative involvement by Lucas, “The Star Wars Holiday Special” turned out to be the gift that has kept on giving. Bea Arthur’s cantina tribute to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Diahann Carroll’s porny proto-VR fantasy. The untranslated Shyriiwook spoken by Chewbacca’s family for what feels like forever (I’m still worried that Lumpy will fall off that railing). Jefferson Starship’s “Light the Sky on Fire.” Harvey Korman, happily attired in cosmic Julia Child drag, preparing Bantha Surprise. Hamill, Fisher, and Ford. The inaugural mass media appearance of Boba Fett in Nelvana’s Moebius-influenced cartoon.

Hey, this thing sounds pretty good.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Focus Features gets a nifty opening credits layout as part of a throwback sequence capitalizing on the heavy New Hollywood nostalgia that suffuses Alexander Payne’s comic melodrama “The Holdovers.” Reuniting with “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti, Payne’s new movie is his first feature since the bizarre 2017 sci-fi misfire “Downsizing.” Closer in spirit to the more intimate emotional nakedness of “Nebraska,” “The Holdovers” lacks the lacerating satirical edges of debut “Citizen Ruth” and “Election” (my personal top pick of the director’s movies) in favor of a heartwarming, Christmas-themed (com)passion play. In another variation on the “grouch with a heart of gold” formula, Payne makes the most of Giamatti’s rapport with newcomer Dominic Sessa and a superb Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

In the winter of 1970-1971, Giamatti’s Paul Hunham teaches classical history to ungrateful, privileged boys at Barton Academy in New England. Paul’s fondness for tobacco pipe and whiskey glass steadies his nerves and masks the unfortunate odor caused by the trimethylaminuria that causes him to emanate a fishy reek. With no family and nowhere to go during break, he’s an easy mark to accept the thankless duty of looking after the small group of students who spend the holiday on campus. Soon enough, the number of holdovers dwindles to a single charge: the surly Angus Tully (Sessa), who can’t conceal his anger at being left behind while his mother and her new husband jet to sunnier climes.

Paul and Angus let fly all manner of colorful insult and withering put-down even as the requirements of basic civility at shared meals yoke them together. Randolph’s symbolically-monikered Mary Lamb, who runs Barton’s kitchen, also remains in residence. A longtime staff member grieving the death of her young adult son (and Barton grad), who died while serving in Vietnam, Mary mediates the animosity between the males. The threesome will eventually take a road trip and Payne, unfortunately, loses track of Mary for a long stretch once she is dropped off at her sister’s residence.

Randolph, who steals all her scenes, is sorely missed even if her absence allows the mechanics of the plot to bring Paul and Angus to a place of mutual respect and an understanding that they are a lot more alike than they are dissimilar. Payne, who was inspired by Marcel Pagnol’s 1935 “Merlusse,” cares less for the story beats than he does for the atmosphere and the vibes, which pay homage to everything from Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” (which also used “The Wind” by Cat Stevens) to Anderson inspiration J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” In one scene, Paul disrupts a screening of “Little Big Man,” but Payne at least has the good sense to include a disgruntled patron who admonishes the interruption.

Some critics have griped about a perceived lack of sincerity in Payne’s delivery. Justin Chang, for example, wrote that the movie “seldom stops trying to convince you how sensitive it is, even as its mix of coyness and overstatement, its clunky tonal seesaws between humor and pathos, and its pride in its own good liberal conscience suggest that it hasn’t begun to think through its characters and their circumstances at all.” I don’t believe I saw the same film, since I would argue that the characters and their circumstances – Mary schooling Paul on the raison d’être of “The Newlywed Game,” a lonely mitten floating by, Angus discovering an unexpected romance during a Christmas party – are the finest aspects. In the margins, “The Holdovers” is a great hang.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Several reports discussing behind-the-scenes communications and differences of opinion between Priscilla Presley (credited as one of the new film’s executive producers), the late Lisa Marie Presley (who died in January), and others with financial and personal interests in the legacy of Elvis add a fascinating intertextual layer to Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” The movie’s title and the director’s filmography should offer strong indications of the principal narrative concerns; based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” the point-of-view belongs to the woman who would eventually marry and divorce the King of Rock and Roll.

Coppola’s own personal experiences with the pitfalls, privileges, and alienations of life in the spotlight have already informed several of her strongest movies, including “Lost in Translation” and “Somewhere.” “Priscilla,” however, walks right to the edge of the celebrity abyss, asking viewers to experience the strange and impossible orbit of the superstar through the eyes of the naive teenager who was just 14 years old when she first met Elvis. The ten-year gap between the two is not presented as a significant barrier to the exploration of a romantic relationship, and Coppola notes the curious hesitancy of Elvis to have sexual intercourse before marriage as well as the willingness of Priscilla’s mother and stepfather to permit their child to “date” an adult.

Recently, Priscilla has used the “it was a different time then” line in defense of the courtship, which began in 1959 when Elvis was completing military service in Germany, but much of Coppola’s filmmaking depends on the otherworldliness of Priscilla’s status as a kind of collected object simultaneously admired and reviled by Elvis. The meticulous production design by Tamara Deverell, the art direction of Danny Haeberlin, the set decoration by Patricia Cuccia and the costuming of Stacey Battat combine with Philippe Le Sourd’s cinematography to render Graceland as Priscilla’s gilded prison during the long stretches when Elvis was off performing or shooting movies with Ann-Margret or Nancy Sinatra.

Coppola has always capitalized on strong musical knowledge and an ear for dead-on perfect soundtrack selections. “Priscilla,” with assists from guru Randall Poster, Phoenix, and Sons of Raphael, eschews Elvis recordings in favor of the filmmaker’s previous tactic implementing anachronistic needle-drops that manage to convey the emotions of a moment with pinpoint precision. The time distance is not as great as the span between New Order/Siouxsie/Bow Wow Wow and the doomed queen in “Marie Antoinette,” but I loved hearing the Ramones, Dan Deacon, and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith alongside selections from Brenda Lee and the Righteous Brothers.

Coppola uses her screenplay to confine and restrain the emotional eccentricity of the connection between Priscilla and Elvis. While Lisa Marie wrote prior to her death that the screenplay painted her father as “a predator and manipulative,” Coppola plays with contemporary attitudes on grooming, resisting urges to construct psychological explanations for the choices made by or for Elvis (Colonel Tom Parker only merits the tiniest corner of story real estate here). This approach intensifies the mystery of the recording artist as seen by Cailee Spaeny’s childlike Priscilla, and the towering, lanky, and occasionally somnolent Jacob Elordi is a stark contrast to the Elvis imagined by Austin Butler and Baz Luhrmann in the 2022 biopic.

Elordi may look giant-sized next to Spaeny, but his Elvis – without the benefit of familiar, potent tunes and on-stage performance charisma – is more human than many of the previous screen portrayals. Indeed, this is an Elvis whose comfort with sending a scout to procure young women aligns him with a sizable number of rockers yet to answer for their sexual predation. This is an Elvis whose reliance on pills, and willingness to push those pills on his teenage target, sees his long shadow shrink. In this woozy fairytale fantasy that will never be happily-ever-after, Coppola suggests we sit with some discomfort and rethink a few things.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Despite accusations that not a lot happens in “Showing Up,” the Kelly Reichardt feature starring Michelle Williams that debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, admirers of the brilliant filmmaker’s impressive oeuvre won’t be dissuaded from spending time in the Reichardt cinematic universe. Reichardt’s feel for and investment in carefully observed minimalism has invited frequent critical placement within the slow cinema movement, but her characters are always so vitally invested in their own challenges that what “happens” is secondary to the ways these individuals come alive to the viewer.

“Showing Up” was released theatrically by A24 in April, but this week’s nominations for Best Feature and Best Lead Performance from the Gotham Awards should generate some fresh interest in the movie. In her fourth film for the director, Williams plays Lizzy, a sculptor whose mundane administrative work (her boss happens to be her mother) at her alma mater – filmed at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, which ended operations in actual life in 2019 – covers the rent on the modest place owned by landlord and frenemy Jo (Hong Chau), a rival artist seemingly incapable of making arrangements for Lizzy’s hot water heater to be repaired.

Like so many creators who figure out how to keep the electricity on, Lizzy’s day job is less important to her than making art. The beautiful, small-scale clay sculptures of women that Lizzy is preparing for a solo show at a local gallery were made especially for the film by Portland-based sculptor Cynthia Lahti. Min Chen describes the pieces as “imperfect ceramic figures, gnarled in form and glazed with surreal hues, their sensibility tending toward abstraction as much as outsider art.” Full disclosure: I always love learning about artists whose work “performs” in fictional space, and Lahti’s gorgeous objects are a key to understanding Lizzy’s interior self.

The simmering tensions between Lizzy and Jo are underlined by Reichardt with sly comedic sensibility. The running gag of Lizzy’s nonstop complaints about her inability to take a warm shower is pure Reichardt – first world problems, we might think at first, but most people we know would be equally grumpy in Lizzy’s circumstances. Of course, Lizzy’s passive-aggressive behavior reveals a deep-seated frustration at Jo’s more successful art practice. When Jo rescues a pigeon attacked by Lizzy’s cat, the treatment of the injured bird simultaneously escalates Lizzy’s resentment of Jo and ties the two women together as they take turns looking after their grounded patient.

Reichardt has poetically called her films “glimpses of people passing through,” but that modesty masks the depths of the hearts and souls we meet. In “Showing Up,” the “art life” frustrations experienced by Lizzy are rooted in her complicated family relationships. We instantly empathize with the complexities inherent in Lizzy’s conflicted attitudes regarding her brother Sean (John Magaro), who struggles with mental illness. Lizzy’s divorced parents live in denial of Sean’s deteriorating health even as they unnecessarily praise him as an artistic genius. The microaggressions suffered by Lizzy don’t always lead us where we think the story will go. She’s a bird with a broken wing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Doing press for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese has defended the movie’s three and a half hour running time (presented during its theatrical engagement with no intermission), but the results on the screen do the real talking. The master director’s latest American original – a sturdy blend of genres and conventions including the Western, the “based on a true story” lesson and history-by-suggestion, the family epic, the melodrama, and the crime/gangster film – come together to make something unique to the special artistry of Scorsese, who is most certainly one of our finest living motion picture directors.

David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same title pulls together many threads to explicate an underrepresented chapter of our country’s racist past. The seemingly worthless land inhabited by the members of the Osage Nation covered oil reserves that enriched the tribe beyond anyone’s wildest dream of wealth. As a result, a crooked scaffold of laws, regulations, schemes, plots, and plans were erected by white people to siphon as much money as possible into their own pockets. Attitudes of entitlement, superiority, and unchecked avarice led to an epidemic of murdered Osage in the early 1920s.

The brilliance of Scorsese’s adaptation revolves around two interpersonal relationships: the romantic bond and marriage between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart and Lily Gladstone’s Mollie Kyle and the sinister alliance between Burkhart and his uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro). DiCaprio fashions a career-best performance as the utterly fucked-up Burkhart. The man’s restlessness and greed are at first the only signifiers of Ernest’s personal drive and motivation. The actor’s instincts to lobby for the part of Burkhart instead of taking the role of federal investigator Tom White (in early drafts, the story was told from the lawman’s perspective) prove correct.

Gladstone is mesmerizing in the most difficult and challenging of the central roles. For much of the movie, Mollie is an invalid deliberately mistreated with spiked insulin administered by Ernest. Film critics and Gladstone’s collaborators have sung the praises of her contributions to the film. And there is no doubt that she deserves all accolades, but I would have appreciated an opportunity to spend time with Mollie in equal measure to the minutes devoted to Ernest. In his “New Yorker” review, Richard Brody lays out a convincing case for Mollie’s use of silence and Scorsese’s reasons for minimal character psychology. It may just be part of the larger point that Ernest does things while Mollie has things done to her.

The glue that holds the huge and sweeping “Killers of the Flower Moon” together is the strange and inexplicable love between Ernest and Mollie, even as Ernest’s moral bankruptcy is a constant reminder of the unwholesome, unholy, and degrading treatment of Native Americans by men like Hale, whose evil is as terrifying as anything seen in a horror movie. Because this particular rendition was not directed by a member of the Osage Nation, it cannot be what Chris Eyre would call an “inside job.” As such, Gladstone’s interpretation of Mollie becomes even more important as the means by which viewers of all races come to appreciate and understand Scorsese’s point of entry to this vital moment in time.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Peter Dinklage plays a creatively blocked opera composer married to Anne Hathaway’s frustrated therapist in Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me,” a lighthearted if lightweight film that depends heavily on the outsize talents of its ensemble as it circles issues of love, freedom, and commitment to self and others. On the way to becoming decidedly unblocked, Dinklage’s Steven meets tugboat captain Katrina (Marisa Tomei, making it work), whose clinical addiction to romance and sex inspires the musical tour de force that also provides the film’s title.

Meanwhile, Steven’s stepson Julian (Evan Ellison) has been intensifying a sexual relationship with girlfriend Tereza (Harlow Jane), not realizing that the small age gap between the two will emerge as a significant legal problem once Tereza’s stepdad Trey (Broadway vet Brian d’Arcy James) finds out what is happening. Tereza’s mother Magdalena (Joanna Kulig) opposes Trey, vowing to do whatever it takes to stand up for her child. Miller filters much of the film’s conflict through the Tereza/Julian story, using the mirror of dual stepfathers to touch on the class differences between the more affluent world of Julian and the less wealthy household where Tereza resides.

The movie’s setting is the dreamy version of New York popularized for so many years by the cinema of Woody Allen and seen recently in Nicole Holfcener’s “You Hurt My Feelings.” Sam Levy’s cinematography is lovely throughout. In addition to showcasing real estate that might result in some drooling, Miller stages a number of scenes in visually stimulating environs, from the dive bar where Steven first encounters Katrina to the harbor patrolled by tugboat to the fields where a Civil War battle is reenacted.

As the story unfolds, you might occasionally wish that Miller would indulge the weirder impulses of her storytelling (her 2013 novel “Jacob’s Folly” – which she should make into a movie – concerns an 18th century Frenchman reincarnated as a modern-day housefly able to enter the consciousness of others). Nonetheless, the souls who populate “She Came to Me” fret and struggle en route to affirmations of big hearts and hope for tomorrow. The staging of Steven’s work is thrilling enough for us to desire access to the whole thing. Miller received help from several Metropolitan Opera pros and performers.

Most recently, Miller wrote and directed a 2017 documentary about her father, the playwright and American institution Arthur Miller, but her last dramatic feature was “Maggie’s Plan” in 2015. Reviewing that movie, I noted that Greta Gerwig’s title character is a “woman so determined to set things right in the universe that she selflessly orchestrates what she believes is the best possible outcome to her own failed romance.” That sentiment applies at least in part to Hathaway’s Patricia. Both she and Maggie depend on order and organization. The narrative in “She Came to Me” doesn’t stick as closely to Patricia’s arc as it does to the experiences of Steven, but Miller makes certain to end the movie with a slow pan that pays off the key personalities we have come to know.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Kyra Elise Gardner, the daughter of special effects legend Tony Gardner, writes and directs “Living With Chucky,” an affectionate labor-of-love account covering the long evolution of the “Child’s Play” horror franchise. Beginning in 1988, the series built a devoted cult following around the popularity of Chucky, the seemingly innocent toy inhabited by the soul of a foul-mouthed serial killer and psychopath voiced by the great Brad Dourif. Gardner’s documentary unfolds in part like a comfy home video but struggles to transcend the contours of a standard behind-the-scenes featurette and/or electronic press kit that would be included with the bonus material on a DVD or Blu-ray.

“Living With Chucky” leans heavily on talking head interviews with several of the key players in the “Child’s Play” universe, including the elder Gardner, Dourif, Dourif’s daughter Fiona, writer/director/Chucky creator Don Mancini, producer David Kirschner, and original Andy Barclay portrayer Alex Vincent, to name just a few. The filmmaker organizes the anecdotes in mostly chronological order, working through the half-dozen sequels (and touching on the episodic series made for Syfy) as the main chapter stops. At its best, “Living With Chucky” grapples with the challenges of bringing the proudly physical doll to gloriously puppeteered life.

Given the incredible achievements of Tony Gardner, perhaps a better movie might have emerged focusing on the full breadth of his career. From very first professional gig appearing as more than one zombie in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video to realizing the self-amputation in Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” to helping design the Daft Punk helmets, Gardner’s creative output with Alterian, Inc. boasts a lengthy list of highlights on dozens of feature films, TV shows, commercials, and music videos. Toward the end of “Living With Chucky,” Kyra Gardner gets personal, recounting the challenges of growing up with a father whose work kept him away from home on many important occasions.

Of course, Chucky is a bigger celebrity than Tony Gardner, and the movie relies on the comments of Mancini to put the legacy of the freckled redhead into perspective. Killer toys, dummies, and dolls have long provided the horror and fantasy genres with any number of memorable touchstones. The subversion and/or perversion of childhood innocence and safety through the malevolent influence of dangerous doppelgangers often alludes to some kind of trauma experience or family dysfunction. Chucky comes from a line of predecessors including James Cruze’s “The Great Gabbo,” the amazing “Living Doll” episode of “The Twilight Zone” (mentioned twice near the beginning of “Living With Chucky”) and the “Amelia” chapter in “Trilogy of Terror,” though the documentary spends little time contemplating cinematic ancestors.

Mancini directly addresses the ways in which he sought to introduce a greater degree of queerness into the “Child’s Play” films, but the conversation surrounding the addition of Chucky and Tiffany’s genderfluid offspring Glen (despite reactions by Jennifer Tilly, John Waters, Billy Boyd, and others) never quite goes as deep as one would like. Gardner also entirely skips over the 2019 reboot, perhaps a sore subject given the absence of the original creative team. Despite that omission, “Living With Chucky” illustrates the realities of a tough business, where diminishing box office receipts translate to smaller and smaller budgets. That said, I wouldn’t count Chucky out just yet.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

As reactions and reviews to Wes Anderson’s return to the world of Roald Dahl attest, the quartet of short story adaptations undoubtedly would have been better experienced as a theatrical omnibus akin to “The French Dispatch” rather than the one-a-day releases selected for streaming by Netflix, where the set now resides. At 40 minutes, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” – which enjoyed a Venice Film Festival premiere at the beginning of September – holds pride of place as the leader and longest of the movies, but the briefer additions only enhance and expand the remarkable considerations of the increasingly brilliant Anderson.

The Dahl shorts join the mind-scrambling “Asteroid City” to make a strong argument that 2023 might just be Anderson’s most vital year to date. The director’s storytelling preoccupations have long entertained a fascination with the matryoshka of stories within stories and the intersection between the literary and the cinematic, even if those aspects receive less attention than the stylistic showmanship marked by mise-en-scène that is instantly recognizable to those who count themselves among the filmmaker’s faithful devotees.

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” a deceptively simple moral fable about a man who comes to appreciate the joy of serving others, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, a fabulously wealthy gambler who learns a mystical technique that allows him to see without using his eyes. Joined by Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel and Richard Ayoade, Cumberbatch embraces the technical challenges set before him, presenting a multilayered blend of textual recitation (often straight from Dahl’s pages) directly addressed to the camera and facially expressive moments communicating the subtleties of what Bela Belasz described as the “polyphonic play of features.”

The chilling terror of “The Swan,” which also appeared in the 1977 short story collection headlined by “Sugar,” sharpens the focus of Anderson’s experiment. Adding Asa Jennings and Rupert Friend as child and grown-up representations of narrator Peter Watson, the recollection of traumatizing cruelty and bullying is rendered all the more powerful by the use of carefully choreographed pantomime and elision. Stagehands enter and exit the frame to deliver and retrieve various props, functioning as supreme exemplars of Brecht’s distancing effect, along with rear projection, forced perspective, and moving backdrops.

With the arrival of “The Rat Catcher,” Anderson leaves little doubt that his depiction of Dahl has come a long way from “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Those reliable filmmaking hallmarks, including stop-motion animation and the perfect placement of miniatures and models, are joined by “invisible” elements and several clues hiding in plain sight that affirm a more sophisticated grasp of subtext. Ralph Fiennes, who also embodies the Dahl surrogate working in the unique hut/vardo of Gipsy House in framing devices for each of the four movies, plays the devoted, rodent-like exterminator sent to rid a hayrick of vermin. If we pay close attention, Anderson invites us to account for the failure of this grim pied piper.

It is perhaps the combination of the Rat Man and the frozen racist Harry Pope (Cumberbatch) of final short “Poison” that lights up the filament of Anderson’s unifying thesis, driving us toward a more nuanced consideration of Dahl. Writing for “Vulture,” Esther Zuckerman makes a bold claim that Anderson is now comfortable questioning the popular myths surrounding the author. Zuckerman reminds us of Dahl’s antisemitism before writing that the four films “make a case for the multitudes people contain: the capacity for wonder and kindness as well as unrepentant bigotry and meanness.” But how far is Anderson opening the door to new scrutiny?

Future essays by Anderson scholars will address all this and more. The absence of women can be blamed on the source material, but given Anderson’s boldness, would gender-blind casting for some roles have been out of line given Dahl’s other weaknesses? Along with that deficiency, Anderson will also be taken to task for what some perceive as the fetishizing/exoticizing of India first displayed in “The Darjeeling Limited.” Witnesses for the defense, however, will cite Anderson’s abiding Indo-cinephilia and a subtext critical of the colonizer as evidence to the contrary.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Jacqueline Castel’s “My Animal” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in January, but its vibes are better suited to the rising blood moon of autumn’s spooky season. Now available on major streaming services following a brief theatrical run in select cinemas, Castel’s feature directorial debut is poised to scratch the itch of discerning horror hounds who appreciate slow-burn smarts as much as gory violence. The film’s modest budget and intellectual preoccupations limit the onscreen depictions of werewolf mayhem, but the sensitive bid for empathy and knockout performances by Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg make up for small narrative shortcomings.

Menuez’s Heather has reached adulthood but continues to live at home with both parents and younger twin siblings. Castel takes advantage of the well-worn, semi-rural Canadian setting (principal photography took place in the city of Timmins in northeastern Ontario) to outline Heather’s sense of stasis, yearning, and frustration. Patriarch Henry (the great veteran performer Stephen McHattie) runs a local diner and navigates a stormy marriage to alcoholic spouse Patti (Heidi von Palleske). Father and daughter have a special bond, but Castel hints that the out-of-sorts Patti also self-medicates to cope with some unspeakable trauma.

Soon enough, Castel lets us in on the contours of a curious routine: heavy chains and shackles secure Heather to a crimson-sheeted bed each time the moon is full. The members of the nuclear unit know and accept the situation, even if very little needs to be said out loud in reference to Heather’s lycanthropy. The silence extends (although that will change) to Heather’s queerness, another secret emphasizing otherness and outcast status in a world of conservative conformity and expectations that fulfill traditional gender roles. Actor Menuez identifies as trans and nonbinary, but Castel presents the character as femme, underlining the way hockey coach Dutch (Dean McDermott) initially refuses to consider Heather for a goaltender position on the men’s team.

The arrival of Stenberg’s beguiling figure skater Jonny sets Heather’s heart aflame. Stenberg, who also serves as one of the movie’s producers and contributes a song to the appealing, retro-styled soundtrack, brings a strong and sensual eroticism to the budding relationship – first in sultry and symbolic fantasies/dreams and later in a fragile and delicate reality fraught with dangers of several sorts. It seems easy and obvious to read Heather’s sapphic sexual awakening and the imperative to keep hidden the “curse” of werewolf transformation as parallels, but Castel – assisted by the chemistry of the actors – excels at drawing a deep connection despite a familiar conflict.

Like many young romances of novel and cinema, the emotional intimacy between Heather and Jonny is threatened by forces both large and small, internal and external. Castel shrewdly links Heather’s perspective and point of view directly to the viewer; the consuming fears and frustrations become ours as the story moves toward fuller revelations. The final sequences comment on mother-child bonds in a manner far more satisfying than the deliberately open-ended question of Jonny and Heather, though one can make an educated guess before the credits roll.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Many films have used the unsettling revelation of tattoos as a device to startle the viewer with a visual roadmap to a deeper understanding of character. The “love” and “hate” lettering across the knuckles of Robert Mitchum’s Reverend Harry Powell in “The Night of the Hunter,” in the context of the character’s chilling speech, still inspires nightmares. In “Cape Fear,” Mitchum’s Lieutenant Elgart quips of Robert De Niro’s Max Cady (a villain Mitchum originated on screen in 1962), “I don’t know whether to look at him or read him.” The prison tattoos on the body of Viggo Mortensen’s mysterious Nikolai Luzhin in “Eastern Promises” communicate a detailed history. Francis Dolarhyde’s Blake-inspired dragon, Lisbeth Salander’s own complex ink, and the grim reminders guiding Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby are just a few more that come to mind.

But hate tattoos of Nazism and white power reside in their own category of cinematic shock. In “Romper Stomper,” “American History X,” “The Believer,” “Skin,” and others, the display of swastikas, iron crosses, death’s heads, and other Third Reich-related runes, black suns and Parteiadler shock and stun as symbols of evil pasts and harbingers of potentially bad things yet to come. Paul Schrader draws from the trope in “Master Gardener,” the final installment of his loose, so-called “Man in a Room” trilogy that began with “First Reformed” in 2017. Second entry “The Card Counter” followed in 2021. All three movies are indebted to Schrader’s commitment to slow cinema as originally outlined in his 1972 book, “Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer.”

Like the first two segments – and so many of Schrader’s previous movies – the filmmaker’s obsession with exploring tendencies toward self-destruction alongside the seemingly incongruous accompaniment of redemption links his filmography to the careers of the cinematic heroes he wrote about. In “Master Gardener,” Joel Edgerton takes on the occupation of the title as Narvel Roth, a devoted horticulturist who oversees the foliage of Gracewood Gardens, the grounds belonging to the wealthy Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). Norma, who we come to learn knows a great deal about Narvel’s past, informs him that her troubled grandniece Maya Core (Quintessa Swindell) will be joining the staff as Narvel’s apprentice.

The arrival of Maya introduces a triangle that will initiate some measure of return to the kinds of antisocial behavior Narvel practiced before he made the changes that led him to Gracewood. True to form, Schrader opts for the austerity and narrative asceticism he so admires. Those choices will delight some viewers as surely as they will alienate and frustrate others. In his curious essay on the film, Richard Brody crafts an argument that “Master Gardener” is “altogether different” from the preceding movies in the trilogy, positing that Schrader’s decision to hold at arm’s length the “matters of history and of race, of mentorship and of gardening” are deficiently ornamental and instrumental.

While I agree with Brody’s characterization of “Master Gardener” as an erotic thriller (even if that assessment is too limiting and narrow), I don’t go along with the assessment claiming a weak and tenuous link between Narvel’s redemption and the minimal effort of “a change of heart, good works, and a sense of self-punishing submission to the terms and conditions of one’s new life.” Instead, Schrader’s wicked caginess and determined reticence carves out the necessary room for us to use our own imaginations when it comes to making sense of these peculiar people.