Arts
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Sins of the mother W This nuclear family is bubbling over with secrets, and this supernatural story takes cues from Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist—all worthy influences. My problem is I don’t believe in the devil or the occult, so it’s hard to become scared of those ideas, but I still really enjoyed the atmospherics, acting, and direction. Glen Even though I’ve determined I Aster, who until now has only written can’t be frightened by movies anymore, I and directed short films, has an auteur’s still like to try, and I can say this about vision. I’ll definitely go out of my way to Hereditary: It’s doing everything right! see his next film, and I highly recommend It’s moody—a slow burn of tension and this one. foreboding. When it resorts to sparingly Anna I also find occult-themed films can’t used jump scares, they’re get me to that truly tovery effective. The acting the-bones level of fright, hEREDITARY is stupendous! Collette but I imagine if you’re a What’s it rated? R is fantastic, playing believer in such things, What’s it worth, Anna? Full price Annie as a woman on Hereditary may serve What’s it worth, Glen? Full price the brink of a meltdown, you on a whole other Where’s it showing? Downtown who internalizes so much level than it did me. That Centre, Galaxy, Park, Stadium 10 that her raw emotions being said, this taut, can’t help but burst out quietly electric film did have me riveted uncontrollably. Likewise, Gabriel Byrne from the opening scene, and the next two plays her husband, Steve, with a quiet hours were spent puzzling out what was resignation. He knows Annie’s been really going on with these characters, through a lot and is often on edge, and this house, and their psyches. Colette is he does his best to understand, but he’s fantastic as Annie, a sought-after artist close to his own breaking point. Kids of miniatures, and the rapidly devolving can be eerily scary, and Milly Shapiro world she lives in morphs her into someone as 13-year-old daughter Charlie is else entirely. Her relationship with family perfectly cast. She plays a quirky child, is less than easy, and early on we learn odd-looking, off-putting, and in some nonthat her mother was less of a friend and specific way differently abled. Alex Wolff more of a burden in her life. Her mother is her brooding older teenage brother and Charlie also shared a sort of secret Peter, who feels put-upon to include connection, a point Annie finds both Charlie in his mostly awkward social life. frustrating and disappointing. After her mother’s funeral, Annie asks Steve, “Should I feel sadder?” CREEPY Soon it becomes evident that Charlie (a while her mother may be gone perfectly from this world, she isn’t gone cast Milly from Annie’s thoughts, and she Shapiro) exhibits starts to feel haunted by the increasingly memories lurking around every troubling corner. Her relationship with behavior. Peter is a delicate balancing act. She’s so frightened of doing wrong that she’s frozen, and therefore a somewhat cold yet oddly demanding mother to him. The relationships in this film are the meat of it, and Aster has pulled off a complicated and delicate riter-director Ari Aster, in his feature-length debut, helms this supernatural horror story about Annie Graham (Toni Collette), who after her mother, Ellen, dies begins noticing strange goings on while simultaneously examining her family’s disturbing history. (127 min.)
At the
DEVIL’S DEBT Annie (Toni Collette) watches in horror as her loved one spontaneously bursts into flames.
weaving of both fright and family. Glen This really is fine filmmaking. Annie’s miniatures mirror her life. She uses the dioramas as a kind of journal or diary, chronicling everything around her. With her gallery breathing down her neck to see her progress before her next show, it just increases her stress. I don’t want to burden Aster with the label “Hitchcockian,” but he’s got some important foreshadowing going on (and a penchant for including Hitchcockesque tension-filled music—think raw-nerved composer Bernard Herrmann-lite). When Charlie is lightly rebuked by her teacher for not doing her assignment, a bird crashes into the classroom window. Charlie is later seen picking it up and mutilating it in a way that gains importance as the tale continues. In another scene, Peter’s teacher is talking about a Greek tragedy and asking his students what would be more tragic: having free will and making the bad choices that lead to the tragedy, or not having free will, making the tragedy inevitable? That’s at the heart of this story: Is what befalls Annie and her family preordained? Aster moves the camera around Annie’s miniatures, sometimes flawlessly shifting from them into the life-size rooms they’re based on, and Aster also frequently uses tilt-shift
Movies
ADRIFT What’s it rated? PG-13 What’s it worth? Rental Where’s it showing? Stadium 10, Park Baltasar Kormákur (Contraband, 2 Guns, Everest) directs this true story of survival about Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley) and Richard Sharp (Sam Clafin), two free-spirited lovers and avid sailors who set off to cross an ocean only to encounter a catastrophic hurricane that leaves their sailboat in ruins and Richard gravely injured. Can Tami find the will to save them? Imagine if romance novelist Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, The Choice, The Best of Me) decided to write a disaster-at-sea story and you’ll have a pretty good idea about Adrift. It opens post disaster, as
Tami awakens in the hold of a sailboat half submerged in water, a large cut on her head and badly bruised. She’s frantically searching for her fiancé, Richard, but she also knows she has to pump out the water before her boat sinks. From there, the film proceeds to flash back five months to when Tami meets Richard. The film repeatedly moves through time, cutting between their romance and her struggle to survive and help a severely injured Richard, who can do nothing to help Tami besides provide advice and emotional support. The romance part of the film is pretty sappy, and the disaster part of the film is fairly harrowing, but compared to what I consider the gold standard of lost-at-sea films, Robert Redford’s phenomenal All is
Lost (2013), Adrift is just OK. There’s plenty of drama, and Tami’s struggle to survive and save Richard and herself is certainly potent, but the film relies too much on emotional manipulation. As a true story, it’s an amazing tale of survival, but as a film, it’s good but not great. What really saves the film is a raw, powerful, and committed performance by Woodley. Director Kormákur knows his way around seafaring disaster—his The Deep (2012) is about a fisherman trying to survive after his boat capsizes off the coast of Iceland—but his CGI storm in Adrift isn’t as impressive as the CGI of The Perfect Storm (2000). It’s all these little things that undermine Adrift: The romance feels too easy, even with the argument about whether the
46 • New Times • June 14 - June 21, 2018 • www.newtimesslo.com
camera tricks to make the real world look like a miniature. Is Annie no more able to control her destiny than the tiny figures she creates for her dioramas? If you’re like me, you won’t be frightened by the film’s supernatural elements, but you will be wowed by the skillful execution of a dread-filled tragedy. Anna The great thing about a film like this is that it can work for folks outside of its obvious reach; while I may not be ripe for the obscure world of the occult, I certainly can enjoy a film about the fray— the mind obscured by loss and loneliness, tricks we play on ourselves because of lack of sleep, lack of understanding, lack of self in the most frightening way. All of these characters become live nerves eating away at each other— distant, then close, and then completely alien to one another. It’s a world of seclusion, and I must say the house they inhabit breathes both the grandiose and the claustrophobic that sets an ambiance of unknowing. While it didn’t grab me in the on-the-edge-of-my-seat sort of way I dream of, Hereditary hits with a boom and a bang, eerily scary and with a haunting quietness that hisses even in its final reveal. ∆ Split Screen is written by Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and his wife, Anna. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
REVIEW SCORIng FULL PRICE .... It’s worth the price of an evening show MATInEE ........ Save a few bucks, catch an afternoon show REnTAL .......... Rent it STREAMIng.... Wait ’til netflix has it nOThIng ........ Don’t waste your time couple should accept $10,000 and two first-class return tickets from San Diego to Tahiti in exchanges for piloting the luxury sailboat to California for Richard’s friends, a rich British couple; the CGI is good but not great, leading to distraction and pulling viewers out of the drama; and there’s a twist near the end that won’t be a surprise for those familiar with Tami’s adventure, but that might seem like a gimmick or trick to those—like me—who were unfamiliar with her tale. It’s a film that’s worth seeing, and if you’re a fan of the genre, hit a matinee, but I think I would have been pleasantly surprised to rent this film at Redbox or even wait for it to show up on a streaming service. (120 min.) —Glen Starkey
BOOK CLUB
DEADPOOL 2
What’s it rated? PG-13 Where’s it showing? Palm, Bay, Fair Oaks, Stadium 10, Galaxy Diane (Diane Keaton) is recently widowed after 40 years of marriage. Vivian (Jane Fonda) enjoys her men with no strings attached. Sharon (Candice Bergen) is still working through a decadesold divorce. Carol’s (Mary Steenburgen) marriage is in a slump after 35 years. Four lifelong friends’ lives are turned upside down to hilarious ends when their book club tackles the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey. From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter. (104 min.) —Paramount Pictures
What’s it rated? R What’s it worth? Full Price Where’s it showing? Downtown Centre, Stadium 10, Park, Galaxy David Leitch (Atomic Blonde) directs this sequel about irreverent former mercenary-turned-mutant superhero Wade “Deadpool” Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), who this time around convenes a team of fellow mutants to protect a supernaturally-gifted young boy, Russell “Firefist” Collins (Julian Dennison), from the vengeful, time-traveling mutant Cable (Josh Brolin). Deadpool 2 makes fun of itself, Superman, the X-Men, the Marvel Universe, Marvel’s competitor DC Comics,
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MOVIES continued page 47