Weekend Film Roundup June 01, 2024

Ever since Jason Voorhees skulked across Camp Crystal Lake, the slasher has long been obsessed with the aesthetic constraints of the forest, treating it as the basis for endless nightmarish scenarios. They are insulated hellscapes, places where gore and screams are absorbed. In slashers, death keeps the woods buzzing with anonymous life. Chris Nash’s feature film debut, In A Violent Nature, immediately involves the audience in the shifting mire of the slasher’s ecosystem, with its protagonist Johnny (Ry Barrett) crawling out from a layer of silt and dead leaves after a fairly innocuous conversation between disembodied voices (and the stealing of a cursed amulet, of course). It’s like the woods themselves are possessed, blurring the line between setting and characters–all of which is characteristic of Nash’s unusual filmmaking. Background bleeds into foreground, action into inaction, violence into natural serenity. - Anna McKibbin Read More

During the press tour for Mad Max: Fury Road, filmmaker George Miller was asked repeatedly how the film connected to the previous three installments in the Mad Max franchise. It was a fair question, prompted mainly by the fact that Tom Hardy, an actor in his 30s, was recast in the title role originated by Mel Gibson, who’s about 20 years his senior. Was it supposed to be a sequel? A reboot? A reimagining? Miller danced around the question time and time again, most often coming back to the term “revisiting.” What that means exactly only Miller knows, but it doesn’t do much to clear up the continuity of the franchise in any way that makes sense. Now that the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, is in theaters, those timeline inconsistencies are in our face all over again. Which forces us, as fans, to ask ourselves: Does it really matter? - Cindy White Read More

The soundtrack to The Crow showed up in stores two months before the actual movie played in multiplexes. That should give you an idea of how popular soundtracks were back in the day. - Craig D. Lindsey Read More

The summer movie season is here, and it’s in rough shape. Last month was one disappointment after another for theaters. Well-reviewed action spectacles, like The Fall Guy and Furiosa, fell short as kid-friendly CGI creatures struggled to put butts in seats. It didn’t matter if they were new or existing IP because neither Garfield nor IF captured the movie-going public’s imagination. Not even the Amy Winehouse biopic worked. Only Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes managed to cross $100 million, and that’s the third reboot of a half-a-century-old franchise. - Matt Schimkowitz Read More

Freaks, sickos, and perverts the world over breathed a sigh of relief when it was announced in October 2022 that John Waters would be adapting his novel Liarmouth into a feature film. For one thing, the film would be his first since 2004's A Dirty Shame. Then, it was later revealed that Aubrey Plaza wanted to star in the film, and Waters wanted her to do it, too. It seemed almost too good to be true. - Drew Gillis Read More

Cult filmmaker Tommy Wiseau, somehow independently wealthy despite not seeming to actually do much of anything besides selling underwear with his name on it alongside The Room DVDs and shirts, has finally, after two decades, put aside enough scratch to self-fund a follow-up feature. (The less said about his documentary short “Homeless in America” and his pseudo-sitcom The Neighbors, the better.) With Big Shark, he’s following a more marketable trend of the low-budget sharksploitation flick, and is roadshow touring it alongside The Room, sometimes on the same night, other times on successive dates. - Luke Y. Thompson Read More

I’ve experienced a rare thing with regards to David Cronenberg’s latest film, The Shrouds, particularly during festival time. As it’s a Canadian film, one of several that premiered this year in Cannes, I got to screen it a few days before flying to France. I’ve thus had a couple weeks to let its bones settle, to be able to look at it not with the instantaneity usually required to evaluate, as per our métier, but with the ability to allow its images and ideas to linger before fully reacting. - Jason Gorber Read More

Much has been made of the post-pandemic theatrical experience and the takeover of streaming, but there have been promising signs for the state of cinema. Last summer’s Barbenheimer got at least hundreds of thousands of butts in seats, and just this weekend after winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, director Sean Baker declared, “The future of cinema is where it began—in a movie theater!” - Drew Gillis Read More

On cinema’s “It’s so over”/“We’re so back” scale, Wolfs surely has to qualify for the latter. It’s been 16 years since buddies Brad Pitt and George Clooney shared the screen (in 2008’s Burn After Reading, preceded by Steven Soderbergh’s Oceans trilogy), and in that time the box office has evolved dramatically from what it was when these two superstars were in their heyday. In some ways, the trailer for Wolfs—which premieres in theaters September 20—feels charmingly old-fashioned, right down to the Frank Sinatra soundtrack. It’s refreshing, really! - Mary Kate Carr Read More

Just how far will Moana go? The generic marketing answer for the upcoming Moana 2 is “Further than ever before!” It’s unclear just how different this sequel adventure is from the fantastical journey Moana took in the original movie. But a new trailer for the film, which premieres on November 27, teases a brand new direction to set sail alongside our heroine (Auli‘i Cravalho) and her demigod pal Maui (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). - Mary Kate Carr Read More