Buzz Blog

Arcadian **1/2
I suppose there are worse things on which to build a post-apocalyptic horror yarn than an utterly singular creature design; I just wish this one had been build on pretty much anything interesting in addition to that. It’s mostly set 15 years after humanity was decimated by the arrival of nocturnal murderous monsters—the exact origin of which is left intentionally sketchy—with Paul (Nicolas Cage) and his teenage sons Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) living on their remote plot of land as among the few survivors. Michael Nilon’s screenplay focuses on the day-to-day protocols for survival, which makes it feel pretty similar to stuff like A Quiet Place. And the petty tensions between the brothers—Joseph is a bookish tinkerer, Thomas a free spirit infatuated with a neighboring girl (Sadie Soverall)—hardly provide an emotional anchor. But oh man, the beastly threat conjured up by director Benjamin Brewer and his special-effects team is an absolute work of nightmare-fuel art, with every detail of its weird biology adding to the uncanny creepiness in a manner reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing; I was particularly fond of their telescoping claws, and the scene in which Brewer reveals them. The climax depends on an awkward sense of exactly how smart these things are, considering how long it took them to figure out one pretty basic attack strategy, but at least there’s some juice to the proceedings anytime these freaky mutant bastards are center-stage. Available April 12 in theaters. (R)

Civil War **1/2
Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men) has always been something of a provocateur, so there was every reason to expect, from the title and the marketing, that Civil War would be all about our divided America. Except that isn’t—and I’m not convinced it’s interesting enough at anything else to make up for it. Indeed, the narrative opens with the internecine conflict already more than a year long, as a quartet of journalists—veteran war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst), her Reuters colleague Joel (Wagner Maura), aging reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny)—attempt a dangerous New York-to-Washington D.C. drive to secure an interview with the President of the United States (Nick Offerman). Garland doesn’t even pretend that the schism he’s presenting is based on our current world, as he pairs California and Texas as a seceding partnership, which shifts the focus away from specific ideologies. Instead, this is a flat-out war movie, with the focus on those who try to convey the horrors of war to the rest of the world, and the dangers to which they subject both their bodies and their souls. But the screenplay feels superficial at exploring any of the character dynamics, with Lee’s shifts back and forth between jaded and traumatized feeling particularly forced. A few individual set pieces are often knockouts, including Jesse Plemons as a coldly homicidal soldier. Unfortunately, without any teeth to its social politics, Civil War often feels like it has little to say beyond “war is bad” and “reporting on war is bad for you.” Available April 12 in theaters. (R)

Coup de Chance **
After more than 55 years of making movies, Woody Allen at last goes all-in on his longtime obsession with European cinema by making his first non-English language feature—and still makes something that feels exactly like all the retreads he’s been serving up for most of the past two decades. This one finds a pair of old high-school classmates—Fanny (Lou de Laâge) and Alain (Niels Schneider)—meeting on the street in Paris and subsequently starting an affair, which isn’t a great idea considering Fanny’s husband Jean (Melvil Poupaud) is wealthy and prone to jealousy. Like so many of Allen’s recent collaborations with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Coup de Chance is absolutely gorgeous, and flows with the professionalism you’d expect from a veteran director. There’s simply nothing new to discover here in Allen’s umpteenth variation on the same themes he can’t get away from: infidelity (and the rationalizations therefore), guilt and fate. Nor do any of the performances offer a spark of interest, which was at least evident in Christoph Waltz’s puckish Death in Rifkin’s Festival. Meanwhile, it’s even sadder that when making a film in France, Allen seems to make it the most stereotypically French thing imaginable, including dinners where everyone is eating either foie gras or frog’s legs. He can move from country to country for his locations, but creatively, Woody Allen hasn’t moved from the 1980s. Available April 12 via VOD. (PG-13)

Escape from Germany *1/2
I’m not going to suggest that T.C. Christensen didn’t make exactly the kind of film he intended, for exactly the audience he intended; I will suggest that he pointedly excluded me from that audience. That’s clear somewhat early on, when Elder Seibold (Paul Wuthrich)—the Mormon missionary in 1938 Germany in this fact-based story, tasked with evacuating other missionaries from the country on the eve of World War II—starts whistling in a German train station as a way to alert others to his presence. A hymn, perhaps, that would only be recognizable to fellow members of the Church? One can only presume, because Christensen treats it like an “if you know, you know” secret handshake. That’s just the overall vibe of this film, in which people repeatedly make it clear that prayer, prophecy and providence are going to save the faithful from harm, which kind of crushes the tension; even the one young Jewish girl who keeps reappearing, like Schindler’s List’s girl in the red coat, isn’t about to come to a dark end. In theory, there should be a dramatic character arc to Seibold, who pointedly notes he has one foot out the door ready to be home before he receives his risky assignment, but Wuthrich only conveys steely determination, rather than anything that could be mistaken as self-interest evolving into deeper faith. And therein lies the fundamental problem with so much “faith-based” cinema: It’s about being faith-based first, and cinema second. Available April 12 in theaters. (PG)

Hundreds of Beavers ****
All things considered, it would be best for anyone to go into co-writer/director Mike Cheslik’s rollicking comedy knowing as little as possible, because discovering just how inventive he’s willing to get in the service of a joke plays such a huge role in why it’s so effective. At its most basic level, it’s the tale set in the 18th-century Canadian wilderness, where down-on-his-luck former purveyor of applejack Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Cheslik’s co-writer) must pivot to working as a fur trapper to survive. What ensues in the black-and-white, super-low-budget production is an inspired mix of Road Runner-vs.Coyote anarchy, old-school video-game plot mechanics and retro silent-film aesthetics á la Guy Maddin, utterly singular in being able to turn those ingredients into something cohesive. This is the kind of movie that takes a gimmick like using human actors in full-size, sports-mascot-like costumes to represent animals, and finds every possible way to exploit it for laughs. In fact, that’s really the defining quality of Hundreds of Beavers: It’s a comedy that manages to take several running gags, develop multiple variations on each one that’s just as funny as the last one, then figure out how to connect those running gags in ways that are even funnier. Movies like this shouldn’t be able to sustain their comedic momentum for nearly two hours, but that’s what you get here with one of the biggest barrels of laughs in years. Available April 15 via FilmHub on AppleTV and Amazon Prime Video. (NR)

La Chimera **1/2
Throughout writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s drama, you can feel her reaching for complexity and profundity in the narrative, but somehow what emerges instead is merely muddled. It opens with Englishman Arthur Harrison (Josh O’Connor) recently released from prison and returning to Tuscany, where he and his cohorts plunder Etruscan tombs for valuable antiquities, found as a result of Arthur’s almost mystical ability to locate buried treasures. That’s only one of the odd components Rohrwacher inserts into the narrative, occasionally employing upside-down camera angles or silent comedy-style fast-motion in a way that adds an almost farcical component. Yet there’s also an attempt to wrestle with when abandoned things become fair game for others to make use of, and an odd sub-plot involving a houskeeper pointedly named Italia (Carol Duarte) who hides her children from her employer (Isabella Rossellini). It’s all generally engaging but quite messy, and isn’t helped by a lead performance from O’Connor that’s meant to be somewhat haunted by a lost love, but simply comes off as internalized to the point of invisibility. Rohrwacher’s films have often been sprawling, ambitious tales bursting with thematic ideas; whether that approach strikes one as pleasingly dense or merely muddles is very much a “your mileage may vary” situation.  Available April 12 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Sting ***
It takes only minutes into writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner’s monster movie to realize you’re in the hands of someone who understands how to have a blast with the premise of a giant alien spider terrorizing a Brooklyn apartment building. In the opening shot, the camera pans up a long strand of thread … only to reveal it’s knitting yarn rather than spider web; the opening credits find the eight-legged critter in its just-hatched form creeping around a dollhouse, the scale of things hinting at the giant-alien-spider excitement to come. The plot involves the creature initially becoming a kind of pet for trouble-making 12-year-old Charlotte (Alyla Browne), and there’s a subplot involving Charlotte’s complicated relationship with her stepfather (Ryan Corr) that is given far more attention—and taken far more seriously—than a movie of this kind really needs. But when the carnage gets rolling, it’s loads of fun, as Roache-Turner demonstrates a keen sense not just for jump-scares, but for building tension through camera movement and the use of off-screen space. Meanwhile, all of the Chekhovian guns are placed in just the right places so that it’s satisfying when they eventually fire. Simply put, this is the work of someone who just plain gets how to direct a monster movie built on practical effects—and on a realization that it should make you shriek and giggle in equal measure. Available April 12 in theaters. (R)