Fantasia Fest 2021 - INDEMNITY (2021)

Fantasia Fest 2021
Indemnity (2021)
Written and directed by Travis Taute
Starring Jerrid Geduld, Gail Mabalane, Andre Jacobs
Running time 2 hours, 4 minutes
Currently unrated by contains scenes of tension and violent action, also they reveal that the tooth fairy isn’t real

By Hunter Bush

At first glance, Indemnity reminded me of the 1990s, the kind of mid-level thriller that would inevitably end up in a near-constant rotation on some channel like TNT. My youth was overstuffed with these kinds of flicks, which I think of as “briefcase/gun movies”, where no matter which item you expected the movie to have, it would invariably have more of the other than you were expecting. The Firm for instance seems like it’s gonna be all board meetings and characters yelling at each other across expensive wooden tables, then all of the sudden Gary Busey is being gunned down like a 3rd rate Alex Murphy! Indemnity looked like a classic briefcase/gun movie: lots of dialogue alluding to corporate intrigue, and some exciting-looking action beats. Ultimately it’s balanced more on the Action side of things, but still feels like the ‘90s.

We’re thrown into the plot right off the bat with a lot of good corporate espionage and raised stakes as Sam (Abduragman Adams) receives secret info from a dead drop taped underneath a public bench which leads to him narrowly avoiding being murdered by some mercenaries. Sam has access to a list from a company called M Tech but doesn’t know what they have in common besides that they’re turning up dead one by one. The next name on the list is our main character Theo (Jerrid Geduld), a Cape Town Fire & Rescue firefighter recently on forced leave after a failed rescue attempt left him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Theo is an inherently interesting choice as a character to anchor your film around because he’s unlikeable, though sympathetic. The PTSD and his resistance to seek help for it, is ruining his life. His only coping mechanism is drinking, making him increasingly more withdrawn and violent towards his wife Angela (Nicole Fortuin) and son Wesley (Qaeed Patel). When Sam reaches out to contact Theo he gets Angela who happens to be a reporter, but their meet-up puts Angela and Theo on the mysterious bad guys’ radar and the next thing you know Theo wakes up next to his dead wife with cops at the door. As Theo is forced to go on the run to clear his name, and to find out why he was framed in the first place, the bodies start to pile up and things really settle nicely into that ‘90s action movie groove.

Turns out however, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword. For all the sort of fun potboiler-y/wronged-man thrills Indemnity lifts from the era of grunge music and Crystal Pepsi, writer/director Travis Taute just can’t make them jibe with the more modern action movie elements. Modern action flicks have a greater focus on fight choreography and Geduld doesn’t move like an action star. He’s a bit on the small side for starters. Not a dealbreaker obviously - Tom Cruise, the most bankable action star of all time, is only 5’7”, but what Cruise brings to a fight scene that Geduld doesn’t show here is physical intensity. To be fair, Cruise’s action characters usually have a combat background, which Theo doesn’t necessarily have, but the choice to make Theo more of a grappler/brawler (if it is a choice) makes the fight scenes underwhelming.

My other big issue with Indemnity is the run time. This could easily have been done in a lean 90 minutes if the flick wasn’t so divided into either “plot scenes” or “action scenes”. The fact that there’s a sequence at a hotel that is actually both proves that Taute knows it can be done and just chose mostly not to do it. The result then, is a saggy middle focused on the underwhelming fight scenes or scenes where one character restates the plot outline to another character, but adds no new information meaning the audience is left checking their watches (or twitter). The latter problem is baffling because the final 20-25 minutes of the movie is one plot-heavy parlor scene that should be the finale after another. One of these would feel appropriately disorienting and twisty, which Taute is going for, but this gets exhausting. My one note actually says “This movie knows it’s allowed to end, right?”

The movie ultimately has a message about PTSD and allowing yourself to get help, which is definitely worthwhile, but the route we take to get there is a little meandering.

Indemnity screened as part of Fantasia Fest 2021. Check for availability.
You can follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

Fantasia Fest 2021 - ALL THE MOONS (2021)

Fantasia Fest 2021

All the Moons

Directed by Igor Legarreta

Written by Legarreta and Jon Sagalá

Starring Haizea Carneros, Josean Bengoetxea, Itziar Ituño

Running time 1 hour, 42 minutes

Currently unrated but contains depictions of violence, war, death and undeath

By Hunter Bush

If you’ve been wondering when someone would make a vampire movie that feels like something you haven’t seen many times before, Igor Legarreta’s All the Moons might be what you’ve been searching for. Melancholy and beautiful, it treads familiar ground analyzing the emotional toll that eternal life would take on a person’s emotional growth, but with a patience and gentleness mostly unheard of in vampire cinema. More a tragedy than a horror movie, All the Moons is not to be missed.

I don’t mean to make All the Moons out to sound miserable - it absolutely isn’t. It’s a lovely film about wanting to live and to be a part of the world seen through the eyes of a young girl (Haizea Carneros) given a second chance at life when she’s rescued from a fatal injury by a mysterious woman (Itziar Ituño).

An aspect of the movie’s appeal to me is that its setting, when combined with director Legaretta’s lyrical imagery gives the movie the feeling of a fairy tale or a fable. The film takes place in the 1870s in northern Spain, giving the movie the bucolic setting that’s traditionally part and parcel with the phrase “Once upon a time…”. Another fascinating aspect of the location is that the cast are speaking Basque, a language only spoken along the Pyrenees mountain range between northern Spain and southern France and that unusual sounding dialect actually adds to the magical, otherworldly feeling of the picture.

The young girl, who eventually comes by the name Amaia, ends up in a small religious town, in the care of a man named Candido (Joseann Bengoetxea) whose family had passed away some time before and, inverting everything you associate with vampire lore, instead of taking a life, she restores it. Metaphorically of course, and it’s beautiful.

The story unfolds more in a world of emotions than logic, so occasionally things just happen and you have no choice but to roll with them and see where they lead but even that adds to the magical, dreamlike spell the movie casts. Ultimately All the Moons tells a story whose moral is that suffering is an unfortunate part of life, but a necessary one. Would you appreciate the good times without the bad ones for contrast? Of course, like all fables this is probably open to your own interpretation.

All the Moons screens at the Cinéma Impérial on August 19th and digitally on the 20th. Check the Fantasia Fest 2021 site for ticket information.

You can follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

"DEMONIC" (2021)

Demonic (2021)
Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp
Starring Carly Pope, Nathalie Boltt, Chris William Martin
Running time 1 hour, 44 minutes
Currently unrated but contains numerous instances of violence and terror

By Hunter Bush

Watching Neill Blomkamp’s latest, Demonic, all I could focus on was what it reminded me of and I found myself struggling to engage with it. With a setup heavily reminiscent of Tarsem Singh’s 2000 thriller The Cell, and a finale that leans heavily on a sequence borrowed from Jonathan Demme’s 1991 classic Silence of the Lambs (with assorted other equally familiar components in the middle), I just couldn’t find a way into caring about the story.

This is Blomkamp’s first feature in 6 years, during which time he’s directed over a dozen shorts of varying lengths, themes and quality. The shorts, all viewable through his OATS Studios banner, are exercises in effects-based filmmaking but in some instances are little more than proof-of-concept trailers for some effects engine or idea. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; Blomkamp’s films and concepts are historically extremely effects-dependent, so working out the kinks before devoting innumerable hours, dollars and mental energy to a project is really smart. Unfortunately, Demonic feels like one of those proof-of-concept shorts, just longer.

Carly (Carly Pope) hasn’t spoken to her mother Angela (Nathalie Boltt) in years, but when she’s contacted by former childhood friend Martin (Chris William Martin) he reveals that Angela is in a coma, and is part of an unusual medical technology trial. Soon Carly is working with the Therapol organization, being digitally projected into Angela’s unconscious mind in an attempt to reconcile… or is there a more nefarious reason? There is, and it’s actually pretty fun, in a big, silly way.

Neill Blomkamp loves video games. He was working on an adaptation of the Halo game franchise way back when and after that fell apart, he folded in concepts he’d been workshopping for that into, apocryphally, both District 9 and Elysium. He’s also directed shorts set in both the Halo and Anthem video game universes and as of this year is working for/with a game developer called Gunzilla. He’s just openly and obviously a gamer, so it isn’t really a surprise that one of the aspects of Demonic that works best for me feels like the setup for a pretty fun game: Action Priests! Tactical Exorcists!

The doctors of Therapol Medical are actually “Vatican funded, black ops, demon hunting priests” (I’m paraphrasing Martin, but those are the bulletpoints) and that ...kind of rules, right? It’s a bit like Constantine crossed with Call of Duty. All the priests are heavily armed, well-trained, and revealed to be covered in tattoos and/or ritualistic looking scarification and, while silly like I said, still could be fun if Demonic leaned into it or made this concept more of a focal point.

Because the thing is while Angela is guilty of the crimes she was charged with, her actions aren’t the result of some form of mental illness but rather demonic possession, and that unnamed demon must be Tactically Exorcised! No spoilers, but if at the end of Demonic, Carly had joined up with the Action Priests in a sort of Men in Black-esque origin story, all set to be franchised into the near future, I’d probably have been happier. As it is, the Action Priests are almost an afterthought; a deus ex machina to put Carly into a shared dreamspace not unlike J.Lo entering comatose serial killer Vincent D’Onofrio’s mind in The Cell, only instead of a surreal landscape inspired by works of art, it kind of looks like Far Cry. That’s not inherently a dig. Obviously Niell Blomkamp and Tarsem Singh are very different filmmakers with different visual languages and goals, but if you’re trying to wow me with the spectacle of a thing, some level from a Far Cry game just ain’t cutting it.

This was supposedly filmed “in secret during the quarantine” and it honestly has that kind of “Fuck it. Let’s just make a thing since we have all this forced free time” energy. To that end it feels very like Host from director Rob Savage in that both films hinge on how well they use special effects but where Host knew exactly what it needed to tell its story, and did so with a minimum of exposition, Demonic kind of can’t stop explaining things we just don’t need explained.

I consider myself a fan of Neill Blomkamp in that I like more about his filmography than I dislike but there’s just not much to get enthused about as a viewer. It might be technologically impressive, but it should also be engaging. For a movie with a mother/daughter central relationship that’s so emotionally fraught, Carly’s interactions with Angela carry almost no weight, and it isn’t the fault of either actor. It just feels like that aspect clearly wasn’t where the director’s focus lay.

Demonic isn’t bad, but it isn’t very memorable and didn’t leave me feeling as impressed as I take it I’m supposed to. I sincerely hope it won’t be another half decade until Blomkamp directs a feature again, but I hope the next one has substance beyond the special effects; some steak underneath all that sizzle.

Demonic is in theaters and in VOD August 20th
OATS Studios / youtube

Fantasia Fest 2021 - GHOSTING GLORIA (2021)

Fantasia Fest 2021
Ghosting Gloria
Directed by Marcela Matta and Mauro Sarser
Written by Mauro Sarser
Starring Stefania Tortorella, Mauro Sarser, Nenan Pelenur, Federico Guerra
Running time 1 hour and 53 minutes
Currently unrated but contains frank sexual discussions and language, supernatural sexual acts, and adult situations

By Hunter Bush

Not unlike what drew me to another Fantasia Fest pick, Indemnity (insert article link HERE), I thought that something about Ghosting Gloria seemed very much like a movie that should have been released in the 1990s. Something about the romcom-meets-supernatural angle of the premise seemed to me like it would have starred someone like Andie MacDowell. I would have seen it dozens of times on basic cable and it would pop up occasionally on listicles of that decade’s cinematic obsession with the supernatural somewhere between Practical Magic and Phenomenon.

Gloria (Stefania Tortorella) works in a bookstore with her best pal, party gal Sandra (Nenan Pelenur), but she’s been having some trouble sleeping because her amorous upstairs neighbors are a bit too loud with the dirty talk a bit too late. When nothing else works, she sublets her apartment and begins staying in a recently depopulated bungalow which she unknowingly shares with the ghost of the former inhabitant, and he’s ...horny!

His otherworldly affections awaken Gloria’s long-dormant libido and encourage her to finally really live life. Think of it as How Stella Got Her Groove Back ...from Beyond the Grave! Written by Mauro Sarser who plays stuffy bookstore boss Gustavo, Ghosting Gloria is tightly written, quirky, and much of the humor works despite the language gap because it’s all either inherently relatable (annoying customers) or largely visual (book cover gags). The direction, by Marcela Matta as well as Sarser, walks that horror/comedy/romcom line extremely well. It’s not really very “horror” - it has more in common with Defending Your Life than, say, Paranormal Activity - but it’s still lensed that way, which actually really works. Most of the movie has a smokey, gauzy light that, depending on the scene, reads as either “romantic” or “spooky” which I think is an inspired choice. The editing deserves no small acclaim (Agustín Fagetti, credited as “assistant editor” is the only person I could find listed to praise), tipping moments that could be either “spooky” or “funny” firmly into the latter category, letting the audience know we’re supposed to be having fun here.

There’s a creative streak that runs through Ghosting Gloria that’s just entirely charming. The way Gloria and her b/f (boo-friend) interact is sweet and clever - she uses his spectral energies to power her juicer in the morning for instance - and the larger way the afterlife is handled is just delightfully unique! The cast overall is slim but, in a decision that earned the movie brownie points with me, every person with a speaking part gets their own solo credit with a clip of their performance, all underneath a spanish language cover of the Them song “Gloria”!

It’s just so fun and knows just how far to push things. There’s depictions of sex acts with the ghost including a cunnilingus scene (more brownie points) with some perfectly utilized special effects of invisible fingers pressing against Gloria’s inner thighs! That’s just the right amount of dirty-yet-also-creepy! Small content warning - there is some business involving suicide as the film goes on and while it isn’t exactly glossed over, it isn’t capital-D Dealt With, much the same way issues of consent aren’t when Gloria initially encounters the ghost. I don’t think these are a failing of the film or the filmmakers so much as a stylistic or tonal decision. They’ve managed to craft a very delicately-balanced film in Ghosting Gloria and fully addressing these issues with the weight they would warrant in a real-life discussion would upset that balance dramatically and potentially irrevocably.

Ultimately Ghosting Gloria is incredibly sweet and cute, a perfect date movie if you and your date are fans of things like So I Married An Axe Murderer. I’m really loving seeing these echoes of 1990s film in this year’s Fantasia Fest offerings and seeing what elements these other countries’ filmmakers are latching on to from that era is genuinely fascinating

Ghosting Gloria is screening as part of Fantasia Fest 2021. Check for availability.
You can follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

Fantasia Fest 2021 - TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1972)

Fantasia Fest 2021
Tombs of the Blind Dead
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Written by Jesús Navarro Carrión and Amando de Ossorio
Starring Lone Fleming, César Burner, María Elena Arpón
Running time 1 hour 41 minutes
Currently technically unrated but contains nudity and violence (including sexual assault)

By Hunter Bush

Tombs of the Blind Dead is... not a new movie. The first Italian horror film released in color in 1972 (1973 in the US, where it was edited to achieve a PG rating), it spawned a series of increasingly confusingly titled sequels: Return of the Blind Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974), and Night of the Seagulls (1975). The version playing at this year's Fantasia Fest is a restoration from Synapse Film, who plan to release a Blu-ray later this year with the original Italian/Spanish version, the edited US version and a third hybrid version that seems weird.

This restoration is absolutely gorgeous! I looked up some clips from the assorted earlier transfers and they look about what you'd expect for an unrestored horror flick released in 1972: washed out and grainy, while the audio sounded just as poor: tinny and decayed. The Synapse release, by contrast, has colors that are bright without seeming artificial, and sound that, with very few moments aside, is clear as a bell. So for those familiar with the flick, but maybe looking to upgrade whatever version they may have, I can't recommend this enough. If you've never seen Tombs however, rest assured that it's (largely) a really fun time.

When Virginia (María Elena Arpón) and Roger (César Burner) bump into Betty (Lone Fleming), an old friend of Virginia's, Roger invites her to join them on vacation. Roger's infatuation upsets Virginia since she and Betty previously had an experimental fling in school and Virginia sets off to hike alone and clear her head, spending the night in the church that happens to be the final resting place of the Blind Dead! As you may expect, things don't go great for her, but that's actually quite good for us watching!

The Blind Dead are very fun movie monsters. Depicted in a slight slow motion, their tattered robes flapping as they gallop on horseback, they're mostly silent and always underscored with a very light echo effect that adds a supernatural eeriness to them in a simple but highly effective way. They also have little desiccated skeletal t-rex arms which is pretty funny (also I'm pretty sure I saw one in the finale wearing what looked like a metallic oven mitt, lol).

The performances are fun, the gore is measured and the nudity is mostly very playful. There's a brief flashback to Virginia and Betty's dorm room fling that is, yes unnecessary cheap titillation, but ultimately very sweet? Is that weird to say? There's also obviously someone off camera simply blowing cigarette smoke past the lens to give the flashback a dreamlike, recollective quality and I found that a charming detail. Later when Virginia strips down before bed in the churchyard, she's filmed from the far side of her campfire, the flames obstructing our view of her Coppertone pale buns. Like I said, playful.

The movie loses me about 2/3 of the way through however. Virginia's ultimate fate is wrapped up (no spoilers here except to say that it takes place in a mannequin factory !!! and that rules) and, seemingly lacking direction, the film introduces two new characters as an excuse to explain some backstory. They also beef up the body count a bit, as any horrorhound would expect. Unfortunately they're also the catalyst for a sexual assault that serves no real purpose besides exploitation, which I understand - that was the name of the game at the time, but I just don't need it.

I'm not averse to that time of violence in a film If. It. Serves. A. Purpose. But this just doesn't. By comparison, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, released the same year, is a much more brutal viewing experience, but the act ultimately bothers me less because it matters and the film deals with it. In Tombs, the perpetrator isn't expressly punished and dies no more horrible a death than anyone else.

The film wraps up in a satisfying fashion - I'll never fail to enjoy filmmakers dripping blood on a cowering child - and with a banger of a sequel hook, but if you're interested in checking it off of some cinematic watchlist I just want you to be aware of what's in store for you. If you're still down, you could a lot worse than watching this restoration.

Tombs of the Blind Dead is screening at Fantasia Fest. Check showtimes HERE.

Follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

Fantasia Fest 2021 - KING KNIGHT (2021)

Fantasia Fest 2021:

King Knight (2021)
Written & directed by Richard Bates Jr.
Starring Matthew Gray Gubler, Angela Sarafyan, Andy Milonakis
Running time 1 hour and 18 minutes
Currently unrated but contains sexual language, drug use, murder of one's ego

by Hunter Bush

"Sometimes the most beautiful flowers grow out of the biggest piles of shit"

I'm familiar with writer/director Richard Bates Jr.'s reputation but this is actually the first film of his that I've seen and I've gotta say I'm more than merely intrigued. King Knight is a charming, odd little film, full of heart, about accepting yourself for who you are and learning how to measure success.

Matthew Gray Gubler is perfectly cast and used here as Thorn the patriarch of a modern coven of witches - alongside his partner Willow (Angela Sarafyan) - who has to reckon with a part of his past that he though he'd left far behind: high school. It turns out that introspective, emotionally present Thorn was once Thornton the 311 listening prom king / class president voted most likely to succeed. The revelation that he has not always been the moody and sensitive outsider with the cool name sends shockwaves through the coven, with none so deeply affected as Thorn himself.

Gubler has a kind of sleepy intensity that just works alongside Sarafyan's warmth and measured nonchalance, the two of them conveying the kind of spiritually anchored thoughtfulness that makes them believable as the keystone couple of the coven; the ones whom everyone else comes to with their problems. But once he sets out on a walkabout, essentially going on a vision quest back to his hometown to confront the specters of his past, it's that same sleepy intensity that makes him seem vulnerable.

This isn't a violent or especially frightening film, but you find yourself worrying about Thorn's well-being. He's a gentle soul who just wanted to reinvent himself and while there's nothing wrong with that, what Thorn needs to learn is that you can't truly be who you want to be until you accept who you were.

With King Knight, Richard Bates Jr. delivers a version of Napoleon Dynamite viewed through a Wiccan crystal prism and the end result is endlessly empathetic where no one is the butt of the joke.

King Knight is screening at Fantasia Fest. Check showtimes HERE.

Follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

Fantasia Fest 2021 - STRAWBERRY MANSION (2021)

Fantasia Fest 2021:

Strawberry Mansion (2021)

Written & directed by Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney

Starring Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney, Penny Fuller

Running time 1 hour, 31 minutes

Currently unrated but contains dream and nightmare imagery of a fantastic and whimsical nature

by Hunter Bush

Strawberry Mansion initially drew my attention because I had a limited window in which to catch a flick and at about 90 minutes, it fit in quite nicely. When you're presented with as vast an assortment of films as the Fantasia Festival offers, that's as good a metric as any. I was immediately greeted by the bookish-looking Preble (co-writer and co-director Kentucker Audley) in an all pink room desperate for something to eat until an aggressively jovial friend appears (Linas Phillips) with a bucket of Cap'n Kelly chicken and a two-liter Red Rocket cola.

This, turns out, is a dream and Preble is a dream auditor in a future where the government taxes your dreams. In a later sequence we're given examples - dream about a field with a hot air balloon in the sky and that balloon is gonna cost you half a buck; playing a violin to summon a skeleton in a cemetery? The violin will set you back $0.17. The skeleton appears to be tax-exempt though.

Preble buys some Cap'n Kelly, including an absolutely disgusting-sounding "chicken shake" which is exactly what you fear it is, and sets off on his latest assignment: to audit elderly artist Bella (Penny Fuller) who the bureau appears to have no reliable records on. She's your typical post-flower power creative dabbler: whimsical, kooky and largely unconcerned with technology. When Preble sees that she's still recording her dreams on VHS tapes, he informs her that the "air chip system" - which we see earlier record Preble pink room chicken dinner dream onto what looks like a SIM card - has been mandatory for many years. Her response is "I guess I lost track of the time" with a smile and a shrug.

As Bella, Penny Fuller is perfect. The film has a slim cast and she's a perfect counterpoint to Preble, who Audler plays as a cipher - very quiet, seemingly always a little suspicious and confused (a perfect surrogate for an audience thrust into this strange possible future of 2035). As reserved as he is, she's boisterous; as neutral as he is, she's warm.

The tendency, I think, in describing dreams in cinema is to describe how they look rather than how they feel. For the most part the dreams depicted in Strawberry Mansion feel joyous. Even summoning a skeleton in a cemetery feels more like knocking for your next door neighbor than anything dark or dangerous. As the story progresses, and reality becomes thin, there are some almost Lynchian qualities to the way the dreams behave as they degrade, but going full David Lynch just wouldn't mesh as well with the tone the rest of the film carries. As a result we get dream denizens with cardboard animal heads contrasted with photorealistic ones when things get more serious.

The story that unfolds feels like Philip K. Dick by way of The Princess Bride, combining surrealistic interpretations of fairytale-adjacent imagery to tell a story about a semi-dystopian near future and what falling in love might look like to the people living in one of them. For fans of all the reference points I mentioned above as well as the works of directors like Michel Gondry, Strawberry Mansion is a recommendation without reservation.

Strawberry Mansion is on demand for the duration of Fantasia Fest. Get tickets HERE.

Follow me on twitter, instagram or letterboxd.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN - Vol. 30

Everything Old Is New Again
Vol. 30 - August 2021

By Hunter Bush

Oh hello, I didn't see you come in. Have a seat, soak up some of the air conditioning. I'll get you an ice cold lemonade. Welcome to the August installment of Everything Old Is New Again, my monthly column covering upcoming movies and series that are inspired by some older property. Maybe it's a book or a toy line, maybe an older movie that the bigwigs at whichever studio think deserves another chance at snatching your attention. Whatever it may be, if it's EOINA material and I can find a trailer for it, I'll cover it below.

The way this works is, I watch whatever trailers and footage I can find, make some educated guesses about the flick and lay out how I'm feeling about the project. Maybe I'm excited, maybe I'm not, maybe it's just not for me. However it all shakes out for me personally, maybe you'll find out about something you weren't aware of.

And as always, at the bottom of the column, I've included a Spotlight section to bring your attention few not necessarily new EOINA flicks that I think are worth seeking out. Ready? Let's go.

<>

PREMIERS
The brand new movies coming to screens great and small in August.

6th

The Suicide Squad (dir. James Gunn)
Where: Theaters

In the 2016 Suicide Squad directed by certified macho dudebro David Ayer, a bunch of the DC comics universe's villains are recruited to go on a suicide mission because, being bad guys, they're expendable. It's a concept DC has had lying around since the late 1980s, when writer John Ostrander revamped an earlier idea and made it fit in with the type of stylized action movie violence and antiheroes that were putting the pop in pop culture at that time. Having fun with DCs decades-deep bench of forgettable and therefore explodable villains, Ostrander occasionally fluffed out the team's roster with a character he knew he was gonna kill because it would be a fun surprise for readers when it happened. My guess is James Gunn is doing the same with his The Suicide Squad because the sheer number of characters is unwieldy for any extended length of time. The plot here seems to be building to the reveal of Starro, DC comics' alien starfish which can turn people into mindless drones, but hey what do I know? Maybe that's all a misdirect? All I know is that the cast is supremely stacked with Margot Robbie & Viola Davis returning, among others and the likes of Idris Elba, John Cena, Peter Capaldi and Nathan Fillion as well as Sylvester Stallone voicing the anthropomorphic King Shark, I just think this looks like big dumb fun. I hope I get to watch some of these knuckleheads get blown up.

27th

Candyman (dir. Nia DaCosta)
Where: Theaters

Candyman... Candyman... Candyman... Do you guys think that saying his name five times is a lot? Isn't Bloody Mary only asking for three, or was she also five? Anyway, Nia DaCosta's "spiritual sequel" to the franchise inspired by Clive Barker's short story The Forbidden is a big deal. It generated much hype oh so long ago when the first teaser trailer dropped, but I was still cautious. Then the film's release was delayed for, like, ever. But now finally, it's almost time! That first teaser was all stylized cut-paper shadow puppet imagery and, while extremely cool looking, didn't give me much of an idea about the film. The latest trailer footage however does and much to my joy and excitement, it looks just as interesting and stylish as the choice to use those shadow puppets was! This time, it seems to be leaning on the idea of Candyman being more of a force than one single entity - "Candyman's not a he, it's the whole damn hive" - and we hear an origin that's different from the 1992 version but maybe, in the universe of the movie, that's just a recent example of the evil in the land. The cast here rules - Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris and Vanessa Williams for starters, plus Tony Todd - and I loved the music in the trailer, by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe who has worked on other film scores I enjoyed like Arrival, Sicario and mother! All in all this looks fantastic and I'm super excited to finally see it!

SPOTLIGHT
Here are a few EOINA friendly movies that you might want to make time for.

1st

Thirteen Ghosts (2001) (dir. Steve Beck)
Where: HBO Max

A remake of William Castle's truly excellent 13 Ghosts, Beck's Thirteen Ghosts (a.k.a. Thir13en Ghosts) absolutely rules. Honestly, though I haven't seen it in a while it has probably only gotten better with age, now functioning as a time capsule for that specific era of horror. Not to go full Stefon on you but Thirteen Ghosts has everything: Tony Shalhoub as grieving and cash-strapped widower Arthur Kriticos, Matthew Lillard as a typically wet-mouthed paranormal investigator, bizarre architecture, an early-aughts spin on 3-D eyewear and a metric ton of worldbuilding! If I have one critique it's that we don't get enough of the ghosts. Okay, actually my other criticism is that it should have been subtitled Situation Kriticos.

Mirror Mirror (2012) (dir. Tarsem Singh)
Where: Hulu

I'm a Tarsem stan, so I saw this one in theaters and was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself. I underestimated Tarsem Singh's taste and wrongly presumed that this would just end up as another in that spate of fairy tale updates that were rolling out around that time. I figured this one would just look better due to Singh's fantastic visual style and while it does, it also throws out a half dozen creative twists on the familiar Snow White fable and, thanks to Singh's long time partnership with costume designer genius Eiko Ishioka, some absolutely incredible looks.

The African Queen (1951) (dir. John Huston)
Where: Criterion Channel

The Criterion Channel are adding a dozen or more John Huston movies under the umbrella of John Huston: Hollywood Maverick, including his adaptation of the 1935 novel from C.S. Forester. I watched this quite a few times as a youngin and was always captivated by Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart's performances. They're both just charming, and effortlessly magnetic. There's enough of an adventure angle to keep even kiddie-me interested but in my memory they were always the true draw for me. I'm excited to watch this again and I hope you will to.

<>

Sadly, that's it for this month. I kept delaying this column in the hopes that some new info would come out and put some more movies on the radar for August. There's supposedly a gender-swapped remake of 1999's underrated She's All That (called He's All That, natch) but I could not for the life of me find a real trailer. Ah well. There are some fun things coming up in September.

Our there in the real world, and I hate to be a bummer but also ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, so I want to remind you all to stay cautious if you're going to theaters. Covid cases are once again on the rise despite the heat and the fact that it does worse in warm conditions is worrisome in what it infers about the coming autumn and winter. Take care of yourselves, and lets take care of each other.

If you're not sick of me, you can hear me cohosting the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast with Allison Yakulis, recently talking about 2019's Shazam! I'll also be covering the Fantasia Film Fest this year, again with Allison, so keep your eyes peeled for those articles over on MovieJawn! Thanks as always for reading and Long Live the Movies!