Buzz Blog

National Anthem ***
American queer cinema has reached the point where the stories can take on a wider variety of shapes, and director Luke Gilford and screenwriter David Largman Murray find something that both makes use of tropes and upends them. Charlie Plummer plays Dylan, a 21-year-old in rural New Mexico who takes day-labor jobs to help support his alcoholic single mother (Robyn Lively) and younger brother, Cassidy (Joey DeLeon). One such job takes him to the House of Splendor ranch, a makeshift family of queer folk including Sky (Eve Lindley), a trans rodeo performer with whom Dylan becomes infatuated. Typically, such a narrative would involve Dylan desperately trying to hide his coming-out from the conservative community around him, but such external conflict is underplayed; this is a world where the answer by Dylan’s non-binary friend Carrie (a terrific Mason Alexander Park) to Cassidy’s query of whether they’re “a boy or a girl” is “neither,” and Cassidy responds, “Cool.” It’s much more a character study of Dylan’s emergence into himself, with Gilford employing a few terrific stylized sequences to highlight Plummer’s strong performance and capture the wonder of that self-discovery. Things get a little clunkier when Gilford and Murray try to find more traditional “plot point” stuff to drive towards the third act; there’s much stronger material when National Anthem takes an unconventional angle on its patriotic title and tries to understand who gets to feel like they have a place in this world. Available July 19 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Oddity ***
Oddity is one of those horror films where it feels like the filmmaker had a half-dozen different ideas that he put together to make one feature—and it’s pretty impressive that there’s enough style on display here that it’s not a deal-breaker. It opens with the murder of Dani Timmins (Carolyn Bracken) at the remote old Irish house she’s renovating with her husband, psychiatrist Ted Timmins (Gwilym Lee), apparently at the hands of one of Ted’s recently-released patients (Tadhg Murphy). But a year after Dani’s death, her blind, vaguely psychic twin sister Darcy (also played by Bracken) has a sense that the real killer is still out there. The ensuing narrative from writer/director Damian McCarthy offers a potpourri of horror tropes—haunted house, creepy mental hospital, creepy twins, etc.—plus a healthy serving of folk mythology in the form of a wooden golem. It’s all a bit muddled, and misses an opportunity to focus on the unsettlingly effective golem statue, but McCarthy has a wonderfully deft hand as a director. The jump-scares are rare enough that they’re a blast when they do come, and the tension-building slow burns are almost perfectly pitched. The result may feel like a short-story collection adapted into single movie, but they still add up to something satisfyingly scary. Available July 19 in theaters. (R)

Skywalkers: A Love Story ***1/2
A heist thriller crossed with a complicated romance, Skywalkers is the kind of documentary for people who might not think they’re into other kinds of documentaries—provided, that is, they don’t also have crippling vertigo. Filmmakers Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina spend several years following Angela Nikolau and Vanya Beerkus, members of Russia’s “rooftopper” community of skyscraper-scaling daredevils who eventually become both professional and romantic partners, parlaying their joint exploits into sponsorship deals. Fortunately, Skywalkers isn’t really a movie about rooftopping either as vocation or avocation, though there is more than enough drone and GoPro footage of death-defying feats that it may be almost too intense for some viewers, particularly when we also get glimpses into the unsuccessful climbs that cost people their lives. Instead, it’s a terrific character study of a relationship at a crossroads—and the attempt by Angela and Vanya to scale the 2,200-foot-tall Merdeka 118 building in Kuala Lumpur at such a moment—and how their collaborative efforts provide a potent (and not subtle) metaphor for the kind of trust required for a relationship to flourish. The nearly-20-minute sequence chronicling the Merdeka climb is wonderfully tense filmmaking, to the extent that it’s hard not to wonder if all the setbacks were scripted. That doesn’t make it any less exhilarating to watch, all while you’re hoping that the only fall you see Angela and Vanya take is deeper in love. Available July 19 via Netflix. (NR)

Twisters **1/2
In the nearly 30 years since the release of the original Twister in 1996, it has never once occurred to me to revisit its exhausting mix of inclement-weather set pieces and who-cares narrative; this completely separate reboot follows a similar formula, but at least brings a little more personality to the party. It follows a meteorologist named Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who reunites with an old friend (Anthony Ramos) to study a string of tornados in Oklahoma years after a traumatic event put her off of storm-chasing. Along the way they meet cocky YouTube “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), and it’s one of the smarter decisions made by screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) to take what was the Cary Elwes character from Twister and make him more of a co-protagonist. Powell and Edgar-Jones have a solid chemistry, which helps makes the stuff between funnel clouds considerably less painful than that of its predecessor, even as it ticks off familiar beats: the tragedy that shaped the protagonist’s life; a visit to a family farm; a quirky band of supporting scientists; etc. It’s still a disaster movie built around special effects, amping up the stakes with each subsequent episode but always more interested in roaring spectacle than in any of the humans caught up in the various whirlwinds. Perhaps if your perspective on the original Twister is fond nostalgia rather than its own kind of trauma, you’ll find that prospect more appealing. Available July 19 in theaters. (PG-13)

Widow Clicquot **
There’s clearly a compelling story to be mined from Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, who salvaged the wine-making operation of her late husband François and created a titan of the French champagne industry; this one feels more interested in signaling “Strong Female Lead” than in fully exploring that story. It opens in 1805, with Barbe-Nicole (Haley Bennett) mourning the passing of François (Tom Sturridge), yet determined to carry on his legacy despite facing debts and the restrictive wine-selling environment of the Napoleonic Wars. Director Thomas Napper and the screenwriting team flash back and forth between Barbe-Nicole’s business efforts and the years of her marriage to François, gradually revealing his unstable psychological state. Yet those scenes, and virtually everything else in the 90-minute Widow Clicquot, often feel truncated to provide only the most superficial sense of the characters and their connections. Bennett’s performance suffers most of all, indicating personality bullet points rather than a rich, complex person; the scene where she beds her distributor (Sam Riley) is almost immediately followed by one where she kicks him out of her office, because, you know, Strong Female Character. The tale concludes with Barbe-Nicole on trial for the crime of being a woman running a business, a development that would have provided the framing structure in nearly any other movie of this kind. Here, it’s dispatched in a few minutes, because this movie apparently is already sure that we understand our protagonist is a character who is strong and also by the way female. Available July 19 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)