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Last Night in Soho, The French Dispatch, Antlers and more.
Antlers *1/2
Monster movies don’t have a “get-out-of-logic-free” card; if anything, they need to work harder to make their world make sense. That sense is in short supply in co-writer/director Scott Cooper’s adaptation of a Nick Antosca short story, about a middle-school teacher named Julia (Keri Russell) recently returned to her rural Oregon hometown, where one of her students, introverted Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas), is connected to a beast from local indigenous folklore.
Nicsimian Releases Lonely Friend
Local artist Nicsimian has just released his debut EP, and it’s
a feel-good look back at youth and all the folly one can get into while searching for oneself.
Dune, Ron's Gone Wrong, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and more
13 Fanboy *
I guess one way to pay homage to the low-budget slasher horror of the 1980s is to make a movie so sloppy that those other movies look brilliant by comparison. It’s the tale of a copycat killer stalking cast members from Friday the 13th movies—including co-writer/director Debora Voorhees (her actual name) in the film’s 13-years-ago prologue—focusing on “scream queen” Dee Wallace (playing herself) and Voorhees’ granddaughter (Hayley Greenbauer) trying to stay alive.
The Last Duel, Halloween Kills, The Rescue, Bergman Island and more
Bergman Island ***
Writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve has some interesting things to say about storytelling and relationships, and I only wish that in this case, it didn’t require quite so much toe-tapping on the part of the viewer before we get there. The framing story finds two partnered filmmakers, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), taking a joint working holiday away from their young daughter, hoping to be inspired in their respective projects by staying on Fårö, the Swedish island that became the home to Ingmar Bergman.
SOUNDR Releases Monsters In My Head
SLC native SOUNDR mixes pop punk and the edgy aesthetics of EDM on her debut EP Monsters In My Head, which is a no-filter emotional work that shifts between “go to hell” vengeance energy and personal, raw sincerity.
Fauci ***
The documentary profile of Dr. Anthony Fauci by directors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias isn’t exactly flat-out hagiography of the lightning-rod epidemiologist, but also delivers only sporadically what he’s really like as a human being. There’s a bit of deep biography with references to his Brooklyn childhood and a cute anecdote about how he met his wife, Dr. Christine Grady, but the structure here focuses largely on the two public-health crises that have defined Fauci’s career—AIDS, and COVID-19 . Regarding the former, there’s a tremendous amount of archival footage and intriguing history about that era, attempting to re-frame the way Fauci became a villain for AIDS-advocacy groups like ACTUP and its firebrand spokesman, writer Larry Kramer.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Titane, The Guilty, Addams Family 2 and more
The Addams Family 2 **
Full disclosure: I have not seen the 2019 film that launched this animated franchise version of Charles Addams’ oft-interpreted cartoon family. Yet I feel fairly comfortable that, given the material’s fundamental grounding in individual dark-humored and incongruous gags, I didn’t miss anything crucial to understanding this story, which focuses on the family—Gomez (Oscar Isaac), Morticia (Charlize Theron), Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Javon “Wanna” Walton)—taking a cross-country vacation to dodge someone claiming Wednesday isn’t actually a biological relative.
