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There’s something strange in your neighborhood. There’s something weird, but it could be good. Who you gonna call?
Green Room marks the second of writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s blood-drenched thrillers to have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. You may have heard whispers about 2013’s Blue Ruin as it trickled out of the festival circuit, lauded by audiences and critics alike as a paradigm of the vigilante genre. Now Saulnier takes on the backwoods, pitting some young punk rockers against a group of white supremacists.
A natural poster child for the 1950’s cool jazz movement, the young version of Chet Baker was all chiseled jaw, coiffed hair, and lounging trumpet. The image has long drawn comparisons to James Dean, and perhaps if Baker had died young he would also be remembered as a piece of nostalgic Americana. But Baker lived to the age of 58, battling drug addiction and enduring the familiar career rhythms of a special talent who just couldn’t hold it together.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Zootopia, London Has Fallen, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, The Other Side of the Door, Knight of Cups, The Wave and Emelie.
Ah, the tantalizing ‘what the hell is this going to be?’ question. A passing glance at the trailer for Me Before You will cause many to dismiss it as romantic fluff, a rip-off of the Nicholas Sparks concoction of tragedy and smoldering love.
There’s only a handful of films capable of really surprising you, and 2014’s Neighbors genuinely surprised me. Its ad campaign focused on a brand of bawdy, immature humor that doesn’t work for me, and its poster’s implication of a Seth Rogen vs. Zac Efron battle didn’t add any appeal.
Oh, there’s plenty to be afraid of in The Invitation, the upcoming psychological pot-boiler from director Karyn Kusama. Any time paranoia works its way into a film the audience immediately loses its bearing, unsure of which character is lying, which is telling the truth, or if everything they’re seeing is just the fever dream of an ill mind. A blow could come from anywhere, and we humans are hard-wired to fear uncertainty.
All you should need to get excited for this film is the name Jeff Nichols. The writer/director of Mud, Take Shelter, and Shotgun Stories has made nothing but high-quality films, and his reward has been increasingly bigger budgets and bigger box office totals. Midnight Special is his first studio film, and while it’s being released on a crowded weekend led by Allegiant and Miracles from Heaven, I see no reason to think it won’t surpass Mud’s $21.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Gods of Egypt, Eddie the Eagle, Triple 9, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon:
How far can wealth take you? Really far, it turns out. Loosely based on the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, Marguerite follows a passionate but terrible opera singer who funds her own career.
This thriller has been winning over genre fans at festival screenings for months, boasting an impressive 8.2 rating on IMDB from the handful of people who’ve seen it. They say it’s a rather twisty tale, which to be honest the trailer doesn’t capture well, as the setup appears to be pretty basic for a traveling, backwoods horror tale.
I would buy Tilda Swinton as the woman of the century. She’s got a magnetic quality that the biggest stars share, yet there’s also an oddball sensibility to her. While not aloof, fame doesn’t seem to be a driving force in her career, as she seems to select whatever roles that piques her interest.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Race, Risen, The Witch, Embrace of the Serpent, Busco Novio Para Mi Mujer, Neerja and Rolling Papers.
Remember when everyone fell in love with Once? Well, that was nine years ago now, and writer/director John Carney has yet to, and probably never will, produce another hit quite like it. Begin Again made more money, but the success of Once was a right-place-at-the-right-time sort of phenomena.
It’s a reunion on all fronts in the Forsaken trailer. Characters find each other after a long war, actors reunite with former co-stars, and, of course, Kiefer and Donald Sutherland play father and son for the first time onscreen. Anyone who’s entertained by meta-filmmaking should relish watching the two work through their characters’ broken relationship, but there’s plenty of other less obvious things to suss out from this trailer.