Amelia Eve in Insidious: Out of the Further
We've been in it for a while now, but welcome to mid-to-late August – Hollywood's annual throw-the-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks season. The summer blockbusters are behind us, as are the releases that should've been blockbusters. (The End of Oak Street, anyone? No? Really?!) So until the Next Big Thing lands in September – Practical Magic 2? Zach Cregger's Resident Evil? – we dedicated movie-hounds will do what we always do this time of year: wade through a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of iffy options in the hope that something great sneaks through.
Among the five area debuts I caught this past weekend, nothing great did … although something might've had its unfortunate only-two-showings-per-day booking in Moline allowed me to see Jane Schoenbrun's Cannes Film Festival hit Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma. Alas, I had to find my cinematic sex, death, and camp elsewhere.
On the plus side, though, even if nothing entirely thrilled me, as least nothing outright sucked – making this the perfect time for another quintet of 300-word reviews. It's a challenge I periodically give myself to give your eyeballs a break, and to prove to my publisher than I occasionally can adhere to a word count.
In order of attendance:
INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER
Who's the busiest deceased figure in movies? Elvis? Jesus? The Ghost of Christmas Past? Valid options all. But I'm tempted to go with Lin Shaye's Elise Rainier, the paranormal psychic who was killed in 2010's original Insidious and, through the magic of fractured chronologies and that Purgatorial dead zone “The Further,” has appeared in all five of this horror series' sequels/prequels. As 82-year-old Shaye is a lovely presence, this isn't necessarily a complaint. Elise's initial pluck, however, has steadily diminished (guess that'll happen when you've been dead this long), and nowadays, she only serves as an ambulatory exposition dump, explaining and explaining and explaining whatever past events and new “rules” are required knowledge for anything on screen to make even minimal sense. I like seeing Shaye, but wish this franchise didn't have to keep trying so hard. While occasionally referencing Insidious touchstones (that red-faced demon, a fan favorite, shows up for roughly a second-and-a-half), writer/director Jacob Chase's Out of the Further establishes an independent story for single mom and dentist Gemma Hall (Amelia Eve), a “courier” who's able to move physical objects between our world and the Further. That makes her a ripe vehicle for a mass undead getaway, as Elise makes exhaustively clear, and most of Chase's film is similarly logy: standard “Boo!” effects amid endless narrative repetition, and an underwhelming new villain, Sam Spruell's Cyrus Lam, who's like the love child of Marilyn Manson and Keith Richards, except he doesn't rock. Happily, though, Eve does, as does Brandon Perea as Gemma's cop beau, and there are two truly inventive, spine-tingling set pieces: one involving a particularly hideous dental exam, and one suggesting a Backrooms that takes place entirely within the confines of a couch-cushion fort. The latter was eerie as hell … but I kinda wanted to play.
TONY
This morning, I bumped into a friend who was considering going to director/co-writer Matt Johnson's coming-of-age tale Tony, and the way he said “But I like Anthony Bourdain ...” made me think he was leery for one of two reasons. Either he didn't want to see the legendary chef portrayed, per Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential memoir, as “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless young lout,” or he didn't want to be reminded of Bourdain's 2018 suicide, the way my sister can't watch The End of the Tour due to how much she adored her ISU professor David Foster Wallace. For those worried about potential melancholy, fear not: This bio-pic is largely a comedy, and even when Dominic Sessa's 19-year-old Tony is at his lowest, there's zero hint of suicidal despondence. If, however, you're waffling because you don't want to see Bourdain presented as a prick, steer clear – until he effectively grows up, this dude “badly in need of a good ass-kicking” (Kitchen Confidential again) generally acts like a major d-bag. It's quite fun to watch. In covering the summer of '75 that aimless Bourdain spent as a dishwasher at a low-rent Cape Cod eatery, Tony is pretty prototypical. We get the reckless protagonist; the grizzled mentor (a terrific Antonio Banderas); the unattainable crush (Emily Jones); the dangerous-bad-boy pal (Leo Woodall, superb); the gradual emotional maturation; the inevitable tragedy; the ultimate redemption. Yet Johnson, propelling the action with admirable speed, writes spiky, winningly profane dialogue, and the brash, laser-focused Sessa finally fulfills the promise of his 2023 Holdovers debut. All told, the film is deeply formulaic yet undeniably entertaining, though you're advised to eat before (or while) seeing it. Otherwise, that shot of the thermidor entrée will make you immediately bolt the auditorium … and head straight to Red Lobster.
THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE
Because it was so quietly marketed and adapted from a British children's-book series I'd never heard of, I wasn't surprised that director Ben Gregor's family adventure The Magic Faraway Tree just missed this past weekend's box-office top 10. (Far more surprising: Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma made the cut!) But I was pleased to learn that this domestic underachiever, released in the U.K. this past March, was actually an overseas hit, because it's frequently charming as all-get-out. Gregor's film has also, evidently, been cleverly adapted by Paddington 2 co-scribe Simon Farnaby, unless original Faraway Tree author Enid Blyton was prescient enough to make unplugging from an electronics-fueled world the driving force in her 1939-51 novels. After quitting her inventing job rather than watch her products outfitted with robo-surveillance, Polly Thompson (Claire Foy) and stay-at-home hubby Tim (Andrew Garfield) decide to pursue their dream of moving to the country and starting a tomato-sauce company. This doesn't sit well with their tech-obsessed kids Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), Joe (Phoenix Laroche), and Fran (Billie Gadsdon), who are appalled to discover their new digs offer no electricity or WiFi. They come around, though, when Fran discovers, yes, the Magical Faraway Tree that houses fairies, pixies, sprites, and all the candy you could ever want. I should probably mention that Farnaby also co-wrote 2023's Wonka, and whenever his latest gets too aggressively Wonka in its slapstick and sugary whimsy, it's annoyingly manic. The more earthbound family-comedy dynamic, however, is unerringly delightful, with the ideally matched Foy and Garfield supervising three first-rate young talents, and sharp comic turns provided by Rebecca Ferguson, Jennifer Saunders, Nicola Coughlan, Baby Reindeer stalker Jessica Gunning, and, if you're paying attention, Monty Python's Michael Palin. Oh, and Dame Judi Dench voices the Thompson's London refrigerator. That gal can play anything.
MUTINY
As translated, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina opens with: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I suppose you could also say that all good Jason Statham revenge thrillers are alike, and each bad Jason Statham revenge thriller is … . Well, mostly indistinguishable from the good ones. A former killing machine trying to live in peaceful solitude. A beloved friend/mentor/spouse kidnapped or murdered. Our hero going rogue in order to exact vengeance. Not even the length of Statham's beard stubble changes from project to project, and scanning his résumé, it can be hard to remember which of the action star's showcases you enjoyed and which you merely tolerated. I tolerated director Jean-François Richet's Mutiny, which places Statham's Cole Reed – such a Jason Statham character name! – on a cargo ship that's (a) manned by the brutes who caused his best friend's death, and (b) containing humans being trafficked out of Bangkok. For 90-ish minutes, there's really nothing to do but watch Cockney Cole and an unexpected American ally (Annabelle Wallis) pick off one swarthy goon after another, and as these things go, it's pretty bearable. In truth, my biggest gripe about Richet's serviceable throwaway, which does boast some genuinely exciting action choreography, is that Mutiny is an incorrect title, considering none of the shipmates are uprising against their heinous commander (Danish actor Roland Møller, awkwardly navigating very American phraseology). They're all locked, loaded, and utterly subservient, and it's hardly a mutiny for Cole Reed, who's just a stowaway. This uninspired, passable time-killer should simply have been called Ship, the planned title for Richet's aborted sequel to his Gerard Butler semi-hit Plane. Or even Bounty, though Richet probably didn't want a title so blatantly suggestive of a product used to clean up messes.
SPA WEEKEND
Probably like many of you, I randomly yet routinely miss Diane Keaton … except when I'm seeing a female buddy comedy such as Spa Weekend, and realizing how easily it might've been re-worked as a humiliating vehicle for Keaton and fellow seniors – another Poms or Book Club: The Next Chapter or paralyzingly awful Summer Camp. (I will never not resent that 2024 atrocity for being the final title in Keaton's filmography.) Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who mined similar terrain in their vastly superior Bad Moms, Spa Weekend finds three middle-aged besties – Leslie Mann's Jane, Anna Faris' Sophie, and Michelle Buteau's Coco – leaving the stresses of their demanding jobs and families for two luxurious days of pampering, only to find their friend group's fourth bestie Mel, The One No One Really Likes, tagging along. This astoundingly crude, clueless, Australian trainwreck is played by Isla Fisher, and I'm not sure she's ever been this gloriously nuts on-screen; Fisher is essentially playing Tiffany Haddish's role in Girls Trip, and she's amazing in it. From start to finish, absolutely nothing that happens in Lucas' and Moore's script is surprising, and more than a few “zany” comic gambits, for more than a few seconds, made me want to curl into a fetal position and die. Fisher, though, is on fire as the brazen, dementedly raunchy Mel, the ever-likable Mann develops a sweet rapport with Adam Demos' resident hunk (another Aussie!), Faris plays overextended dimness to the hilt, and Buteau handily convinces you that half her dialogue is improvised, and funnier than anything Lucas and Moore might've written. Slight to the point of non-existence, Spa Weekend is still made modestly pleasurable through its stars' individual comic gifts and shared chemistry, and somewhere, I hope, Diane Keaton is smiling.
