Karl Glusman and Samara Weaving in EENIE MEANIE — PHOTO: 20th Century Studios.
Directed by Shawn Simmons — Screenplay by Shawn Simmons.
Shawn Simmons’ Eenie Meanie is a crime comedy-thriller that follows Edie (played by Samara Weaving), who has a past as a getaway driver. Edie has just found out that she is pregnant, and so she decides to seek out the child’s ne’er-do-well father, John (played by Karl Glusman), whom she hasn’t been with in months. When she shows up at his apartment, however, she becomes entangled in a web of crime to which her former lover is stuck. To save the father of her child, Edie will have to put some of her old skills to good use to do a job.
One of the vanishing kids running down the street in Zach Cregger’s Weapons — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).
Directed by Zach Cregger — Screenplay by Zach Cregger.
Whenever an up-and-coming new filmmaker, whose previous film had the makings of a bona fide genre classic, is about to turn in his latest film, you pay attention. You especially pay attention when the filmmaker’s script for his new picture was so highly regarded in the American film industry that it not only launched a bidding war but also, reportedly, got a modern horror master to fire his manager over their failed attempt at securing the distribution rights to it. Such is the case with Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger and his latest film, Weapons, a multi-perspective horror-thriller with drama and comedy elements that had a memorable and fantastic marketing campaign built around it, and which also, thankfully, turns out to be exactly the kind of must-see thriller epic that I’ve been craving.
NICOLE KIDMAN stars in HOLLAND — PHOTO: JACLYN MARTINEZ / PRIME.
Directed by Mimi Cave — Screenplay by Andrew Sodorski
In 2022, Mimi Cave’s debut feature FRESH, a thriller about dating with a wicked twist, was one of the, ahem, freshest surprises of the year. Naturally, this always makes you curious about the director’s next step. For her sophomore effort, Mimi Cave dropped her first film’s very modern narrative and feel in favor of an early 2000s narrative set in a quirky Michigan suburbia. Cave’s Holland is a psychological drama with thriller elements that is set in Holland, Michigan (hence the title), which is a town settled by Dutch-Americans and which prominently displays its Dutch cultural identity with tulip fields and windmills. The film follows Nancy Vandergroot (played by Nicole Kidman), a teacher who is starting to suspect that her husband, Fred (played by Matthew Macfadyen, is living a double life on his many work trips. To figure out what is going on, she teams up with a colleague, shop teacher Dave Delgado (played by Gael García Bernal), to spy on her husband and investigate his optometrist office. However, in that process, Nancy may have bitten off more than she can chew, as her husband’s secrets aren’t exactly what she expected, while, at the same time, she starts having an affair with Dave.
Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy in “The Gorge,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Directed by Scott Derrickson — Screenplay by Zach Dean.
Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge follows two elite snipers, an American man named Levi Kane (played by Miles Teller) and a Lithuanian woman named Drasa (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), as they are both independently recruited for a top-secret mission in the middle of nowhere. At some unknown place in the world, there are two watchtowers standing across from each other, one representing the Western Bloc and another representing the Eastern Bloc. Each watchtower is guarded by mechanized turrets and bombs, and between the two watchtowers is a giant long hole in the ground — hence the title. Levi and Drasa have been hired to do maintenance on the weaponry and, at the same time, defend the world from what is hidden inside the mysterious valley. As they are the only two people in the vicinity, Drasa and Levi establish a connection, but when one of them accidentally falls down into the valley, everything changes and top secrets are revealed.
In this edition of Bite-Sized Reviews, I give you my thoughts on last year’s M. Night Shyamalan release, a Greek Yorgos Lanthimos flick, an animated film that blew me away, and an Alice Rohrwacher film that I can’t stop thinking about.
Laurie Babin and Juliette Gariépy in Pascal Plante’s RED ROOMS — PHOTO: Entract Films (Still image from trailers).
Directed by Pascal Plante — Screenplay by Pascal Plante.
Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms (original title: Les Chambres Rouges) is a dark psychological thriller that follows a Montreal-based model named Kelly-Anne (played by Juliette Gariépy), who has an unhealthy interest in the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (played by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a man accused of having murdered three young women. The trial, which has become somewhat of a media circus, has attracted different kinds of people, including Clémentine (played by Laurie Babin), a woman who is portrayed as a fan of Chevalier and who believes he is innocent. As the trial moves forward, Kelly-Anne, who has an interest in computer technology, and Clémentine form a friendship, but their intentions don’t seem to align.
Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult in JUROR #2 — Photograph by Claire Folger/Warner Bros.
Directed by Clint Eastwood — Screenplay by Jonathan Abrams.
Movie-star-turned-filmmaker Clint Eastwood is a 94-year-old four-time Oscar winner who is still working with some of the industry’s best actors and studios. Although we’d all love for him to keep making films forever, this could theoretically be the final film from one of the very few stars of Hollywood of which adults of all ages will have had some kind of knowledge. It could even, given his status and talent as a filmmaker, have been a genuine Oscar contender. You would think, then, that this film — which stars actors like Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland, and others — would be a film that Warner Bros. would proudly release in theaters as prestigious cinema for grown-ups. And yet, that’s not exactly what happened. Eastwood’s potentially final film was released in fewer than 50 theaters across the United States, as well as modest theatrical releases in only a select few territories around the world. Instead, it was prioritized as a holiday streaming release as a ‘Max Original’. It sounds like a headscratcher even before you see the film, and, frankly, it’s still a headscratcher after you see it because, well, Juror #2 is a gripping legal thriller that shows that Clint Eastwood, even at 94 years old, still has what it takes to make compelling films.
The family that Yan Shuo (played by Sun Xilun) tries to insert himself into in BRIEF HISTORY OF A FAMILY — PHOTO: Films Boutique (Still image from trailers).
Directed by Lin Jianjie — Screenplay by Lin Jianjie.
Lin Jianjie’s Brief History of a Family (or ‘Blood and Water‘ as it is called in my region) is a Chinese mystery thriller flick that follows a young man, Yan Shuo (played by Sun Xilun), as he attempts to ingratiate himself with the wealthy parents of a classmate. This all happens after said classmate, Wei (played by Lin Muran), deliberately chucked a basketball at Shuo, while the latter was doing a pull-up exercise. When Shuo is injured, Wei takes pity on his classmate and invites him back to his parents’ apartment to play video games. When Shuo tells Wei’s family about his bleak daily life, they, too, take pity on him and begin to admire him for being everything Wei isn’t. As Shuo gradually becomes more and more a part of their family, Wei becomes jealous, while his parents’ past insecurities are revealed.
Directed by Celine Held and Logan George — Screenplay by Celine Held and Logan George.
Every once in a while, you encounter a film that completely blindsides you in the best way possible for a variety of reasons including you not really having the highest of expectations for it. Why didn’t I have high expectations? Well, I think the fact that it was being unceremoniously dumped onto a streaming service, in this case, Max, certainly didn’t prepare me for something particularly great. But, and I mean this wholeheartedly, Celine Held and Logan George’s Caddo Lake is one of the better feature-length surprises of the year thus far — not necessarily because it’s one of the best films of the year (it isn’t and it almost definitely won’t be regarded as such), but more so because of how much this captivating and relatively strong film came out of nowhere.
Aaron Pierre in Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge — PHOTO: Netflix (Still image from trailer).
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier — Screenplay by Jeremy Saulnier.
Over the course of more than a decade, Rebel Ridge writer-editor-director Jeremy Saulnier (who, even, sometimes serves as cinematographer on some of his other projects) has made a name for himself as a promising filmmaker beloved by many cinephiles for his gripping thrillers such as Green Room and Blue Ruin, both of which I am a huge fan of. In 2018, Netflix released his cold Alaska-set thriller Hold the Dark to mixed-to-positive reviews, but the film did not become the critical darling that his aforementioned color-coded thrillers, so to speak, are. With Rebel Ridge, Saulnier has given it another go with a Netflix release. Rebel Ridge, frankly, feels like a return to form. It is a sharp and intense thriller that hits the sweet spot, just like Saulnier’s best films have done in the past.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 