Weekend Mullings - The Conjuring: Last Rites

I have now officially seen every movie in the Conjuring Cinematic Universe, and one thing has become very clear. Or, more accurately, not clear at all: these movies are dark. Literally. Often so dark you can barely make out what's happening. And this is probably why the majority of the scares in them come from sudden loud noises, and less from genuine dread and horror.

But I will give credit to the first film, 2013's The Conjuring. Of all of these movies supposedly based on "true events," that one felt at least partially believable, and as a result, it creeped me out more than once. Even if I don't believe in ghosts or demons or hauntings or possessions, I do know that weird and freaky stuff does happen, and even if there may ultimately be a logical explanation for a lot of it, it can feel like still freaky stuff! Dozens of pictures falling off a wall at once. Doors slamming shut by themselves. Ghostly figures. Creaky sounds in the attic. These are all scary because they are relatable. But too many of the supposed scares in The Conjuring: Last Rites are hallucinations, dreams, or just plain implausible (a girl vomits up copious amounts of blood and shards of glass and is seemingly fine days later), that it ceases being scary, and at over two-hours long, becomes a chore.

And look, I get that the vast majority of horror movies are going to be based in fantasy. I don't demand realism in all of my horror. But it just feels like The Conjuring movies are trying to have it both ways, touting the true event inspirations, and then showing us things that would never, ever, in a million years, actually happen. 

But the thing is, I like this fictional version of the Warrens! I like their devotion to each other. I like Lorraine's high necked lace shirts and bouffant hairdos. I like that they have a basement full of dangerous unholy artifacts that they're not above showing off during parties. As demon hunters, they're a lot of retro fun. I just don't understand why the creators of this series, in knowing they are going to wildly exaggerate these supposedly true stories, continue to squander the opportunity to do truly scary things. This very well may be the end of the Warrens and the Conjuring, and while I'll be sad to see them go, I'm not going to mourn the end of the increasingly preposterous stories that surround them.

Weekend Mullings: The Roses | Caught Stealing

I'm not sure we can accurately call The Roses a remake of the 1989 comedy The War of the Roses, which was itself based on a 1981 novel of the same name. It's more like a film influenced by both, as it veers pretty heavily from that source material.

I thought the 1989 final was serviceable but not particularly funny, and really held together by Kathleen Turner's performance. The Roses is an improvement, but I have to say that once again the movie is held together by the woman playing Mrs. Rose.

Olivia Colman is Ivy, who meets architect Theo Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch) when she's working as a sous-chef in London. In short order they fall in love, move to the States, and have two kids. When Theo faces a career set-back, Ivy is given the opportunity to open her own restaurant. Success soon follows, which Theo has a hard time dealing with, until he's given the opportunity to pursue his own path once again.

But soon bitterness and resentment become the dominant forces in their marriage, and Ivy and Theo face divorce. The movie does a good job of not really favoring one side over the other. You can totally understand why Theo may despise Ivy, and why Ivy wants to be rid of Theo. The comedy in their mutual destruction is certainly dark, but it's lightened a bit by Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as Barry and Amy, friends of the Roses who have found a way to deal with their own marriage issues (letting Amy lust after Theo seems to be one part of it; McKinnon basically steals every scene she's in),

But Olivia Colman is the movie's biggest asset, and I came out of the film realizing how much I love her work, particularly her comedic roles. In The Roses, she's a goddamn delight, whether she's in her restaurant basking in the glory of her success, or threatening her husband with imminent death, she's just a joy to watch, and is the primary reason I will be definitely be returning to this film more than once.

I think I've known for a long time that the films of Darren Aronofsky just aren't for me. My love for Black Swan kind of threw a wrench into that theory, until I came to realize that my love of ballet (especially ballet + horror; see also the original Suspiria), is the primary reason why I like that film. 

But I will admit I was intrigued by the trailer for Caught Stealing. I wanted to see what he'd do with a crime comedy, and once I checked that the cat featured so heavily in the ads does in fact survive, I accepted an invite to a screening. 

My friends, believe me when I tell you this is not a comedy. I guess Aronofsky is just incapable of it, even when all the pieces are right there for the taking. And Caught Stealing certainly starts out as one. Austin Butler and Zoe Kravitz are Hank and Yvonne, hot young lovers living and working in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1998. When Hank's neighbor Russ (a mohawked Matt Smith) asks him to watch his cat Bud while he returns to London for a family emergency, Hank finds himself entangled with different organized crime factions who are after Russ.

Caught Stealing is like a Guy Ritchie drained of humor, full of pain and death that seems to be there just to prove that yes, this movie can go dark. The cat does not die, but it does get hurt, and that's where the movie started to lose me. But it lost me completely shortly thereafter when it takes a turn it absolutely never recovers from, leaving me resentful that I had to sit there for another hour.

There's a car accident that plays a big part in the plot, and an image of a car crashing head-on into a pole in slow motion is taken directly from the 2001 video for Madonna's song "What It Feels Like for a Girl," a violent and funny video that was, incidentally, directed by Guy Ritchie. Do yourself a favor, skip Caught Stealing and just watch it instead.

Weekend Mullings: Honey Don't! | Eden

I think we, as a nation, need to do everything we can to get the Coen brothers back making movies together. Not entirely sure how to do that, and perhaps that's the bottom of the list of things that we, as a nation, should be focused on, but it's definitely on that list!

Honey Don't! is the second collaboration between Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, in what they say will be a trilogy of "lesbian b-movies," the first being last year's Drive-Away Dolls, a movie I found to be exceedingly stupid, and most of the time, not the good kind of stupid.  

Honey Don't is a tad more serious, though it's still filled with stupid people doing stupid things, but at least this time it's centered on someone smart: Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley), a private detective in Bakersfield investigating a car crash that may actually be a murder. (The recent The Naked Gun, another stupid movie, but one that is mainly the good kind of stupid, also starts out with a suspicious car crash. It's a trend!) 

I'm still not sure I understand the central mystery, but it involves a sketchy preacher played by Chris Evans, who spends the majority of the film engaged in various sex acts; probably some drugs, and a French cartel; and a local cop (Aubrey Plaza) who hooks up with Honey.

Of the two, I think I liked Honey more than Dolls, just because I liked the character of Honey O'Donahue, and the central mystery, even if I never completely understood it, kept me engaged. If Ethan Coen needs to get a third one of these out of his system, fine. But I don't think we, as a nation, deserve any more than that. We've been through enough.

Ron Howard's Eden is based on a true story that was also covered in the 2013 documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, and the events seem like the perfect set-ups for wildly entertaining movies. I hope that movie shows up one day!

Of the two in existence, Howard's Eden at least has the advantage of casting beautiful people, and the freedom to fudge things where needed, to up the drama. But this tale of 1920's European bohemians leaving it all behind to live on a deserted island, who then have to deal with the annoyances of each other, resulting in possible murder, starring the likes of Jude Law, Ana De Armis, Sydney Sweeney, and Vanessa Kirby, turns into a dull and humorless slog at the hands of Ron Howard. But if you've ever wondered what Jude Law would look like without any teeth, this is the movie for you!

Weekend Mullings: Weapons | It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley

Perhaps I shouldn't be comparing the films of Zach Creggar with those of Oswald Perkins, but coming out of Weapons, Creggar's follow-up to Barbarian, that comparison rattled around in my mind. They've both released some very buzzed-about horror movies, but so far I've appreciated the work of one way more than the other. Both have an obvious love for the genre, and can craft a creepy scene. But only one has managed to balance the horror and the comedy in their films, and the clear winner there is Creggar.

But what probably set-off the comparison is that there are a few small things in Weapons that are very similar to a few things in Perkins's Longlegs, but where I found Longlegs to be derivative, predictable, and rarely scary, Weapons had me cringing in my seat, and I could never really guess what was going to happen next.

I think it's best to go into it knowing as little as possible, as the story is laid out in chapters that eventually complete the puzzle of just what has happened to the 17 kids in a small town who all decided to leave their homes at 2:17am one night, and vanish into the night. (Scoring this scene with George Harrison's song "Beware of Darkness" turns the moment into a poetic nightmare.)

That all of the students who disappeared were in the same class immediately places their teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), under suspicion, especially by Archer (Josh Brolin), the gruff father of one of the missing kids. That Justine has a drinking problem and unresolved issues with an ex (Alden Ehrenreich), who is also a police office, only complicates matters. 

Other characters who make up the chapters in the story include the school's principal (Benedict Wong), a junkie in town (Austin Abrams), and wildest of all, a character played by Amy Madigan, who I promise you will not recognize when she first shows up.

Weapons has creepy dreams, jump scares, gore, but best of all, a sense of humor that is well placed throughout, and that's probably where some people may take issue with Creggar's approach. But I've always preferred horror that has a good sense of humor, and Weapons wields its humor well.

I'm not the only person who can say Grace, Jeff Buckley's only studio album, has gotten them through some rough life events. I mean, it contains two of the greatest breakup songs ever written, "Last Goodbye" and "Lover, You Should've Come Over," and perhaps the best version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" ever recorded, so of course it has. And when an album plays such a big part in your life, it's often easy to think, well, everyone in the world must know about it too.

But I do wonder if the kids making TikToks backed by "Lover..." actually know anything about the man behind the song. Perhaps the new documentary It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley will change that. 

Director Amy Berg's approach doesn't really do anything new with the genre, but what is unique is that the movie examines Buckley primarily through the eyes of three women in his life, his mother, Mary Guibert, who raised him after his father, musician Tim Buckley, left them to pursue fame, and two girlfriends, one who was there at the beginning of his career, and one who was there closer to the end of his life.

His story is also told through Buckley's own words, using clips from archival interviews, and most poignantly, long voicemail messages. The one he leaves his mother shortly before he died proves he was probably a soul just too good for this world.

Weekend Screen Scene: The Naked Gun

While I've enjoyed the original Naked Gun movies (well, some more than others), I never thought they were ever as funny as Police Squad!, the original TV series they were based on. It may be because I'd seen all the movies' best jokes in that original show. But it also may be that working within the content constraints of network television forced Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker to be more creative with their humor; they couldn't just fall back on dick and tit jokes (and if they did, they had to be sneaky about it).

So I wasn't, one the one hand, outraged that Paramount was trying to reboot the movie when this new The Naked Gun was announced. But I wasn't particularly excited about it either. Now having seen it, I can still say the TV show is the best version out there, but this reboot is no worse than any of the previous movies. 

Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., son of the Frank Drebin played by Leslie Nielsen in the original franchise. And yes, that doesn't make a lot of sense since the last film came out in 1994 and Liam Neeson is 73 years old. But a Naked Gun movie is not where you go for continuity, or really, sense of any kind. 

Drebin's latest case involves a suicide that is likely murder, a billionaire named Richard Cane (Danny Huston), who may be responsible, and the victim's sister, Beth (Pamela Anderson), an author who "writes true crime novels based on fictional stories that [she] makes up." 

Neeson is essentially playing a version of the tough guy he's been playing over and over again since the film Taken, and his deadpan delivery is, of course, perfect for the film. Pamela Anderson also handles the material deftly. The key to a movie like this is a combination of playing it completely straight but with comedic timing, and they're both great at it.

Some jokes land (the coffee gag never stops being funny), and some definitely don't (the heat vision gag goes on way too long) but there are enough of them in the film's barely 90 minute running time that you'll still probably laugh more than you have watching any other recent studio comedy.

Two bits, one involving a discussion of the Black Eyed Peas, and another involving a TiVo, had me howling, but were so like discussions some of my friends and I would have had in 2004 that I actually wondered if I knew any of the writers (I don't). But my favorite joke, which hearkens back to the classic "Cigarette?" "Yes, I know" exchange that originated in Airplane!, is when Drebin enters a party hosted by Richard Cane and Cane greats him with an outstretched hand and "Frank Drebin!," to which Drebin replies, "Me too!"

OK, maybe you had to be there. Which brings me to the final thing I'll say about The Naked Gun. One theory about why Police Squad! only lasted six episodes is because viewers wouldn't give the show their complete attention, missing the majority of the show's humor (or understanding that it was supposed to be a comedy at all). Similarly, The Naked Gun is not a movie you should watch on streaming while looking at your phone. So get yourself to a theater and take a seat.