Abigail: Radio Silence's hot streak has been extended to four. The horror collective behind Ready or Not and the past two Scream films sink their teeth into the world of vampires with this hugely entertaining, unique spin on a well-worn genre that centers around a group of criminals (Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, Will Catlett, Angus Cloud) with different specialties that are hired to kidnap the 12-year old daughter (Alisha Weir) of a powerful yet mysterious businessman and hold her for ransom in a secluded mansion until their demands for a $50 million payday are met, only to quickly discover that the job was a trap and they're now locked in a confined space with a bloodthirsty creature that intends to have them all for dinner. Every role is perfectly cast with Stevens as a sleazeball ex-cop who serves as the group's de facto leader, Barrera as a former Army medic with a dark past whose desperately trying to get her life back on track and Durand as the chipper idiot security expert being the top standouts, the liberal use of blood/gore leads to some really great death scenes and Radio Silence's continued growth as filmmakers is on full display as they smoothly infuse this story's comedic and horror elements together into a cohesive whole. Hopefully Hollywood will continue to let these guys make original horror movies because there's no one in this genre right now making fun movies as well as them.
Grade: B+
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: It was only a matter of time before Guy Ritchie's chill workaholic period resulted in something that really suffered from his current loose directorial approach. I don't know if it's because Ritchie wasn't sure how to tackle this true story about the first special forces mission in history or he just wanted to dial back his signature energy out of respect for what this group of outcasts did to cripple the Nazi operation in WWII by destroying a fleet of German U-Boats while they were resupplying on the island of Fernando Po (aka present day Bioko) off the coast of Cameroon in 1941, but The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare features the most phoned-in direction I've seen from Ritchie in quite some time. The breezy flourishes feel like kind of an afterthought thrown into make the heroes seem like bigger snarky rebels than they were, the quip-filled dialogue is just clunky enough to question whether it was written by the man himself or a C-level impersonator of his and the lighting during the night scenes is shockingly poor for somebody whose films are known for being really well-lit. What ends up salvaging this film is a couple of small miracles in the form of action scenes that remain punchy despite all of the damn darkness that surrounds some of them and Ritchie finding a pair of aces in Eiza Gonzalez and Alan Ritchson that are the strongest additions to the company of actors who are able to speak his degenerate cinematic language since Colin Farrell in The Gentleman. Ritchie narrowly avoided mediocrity this time around and let's hope that his next feature In the Grey-which is currently slated to release in January-is a better effort than this.
Grade: B-
Challengers: At about the two minute mark of Challengers, I already knew that Luca Guadagnino had made something special. The film opens in 2019 at an amateur tennis championship final in New Rochelle, New York. As the camera frantically moves between the action on the court, sweaty faces and tense eyes of the two men playing (Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist) and a woman in the stands (Zendaya) watching intently while a thumping industrial score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross blares in the background, it becomes clear that the stakes of this match couldn't be higher for all three of these individuals. Over the course of the film via a non-linear narrative that cuts between this match and flashbacks that span the course of about 15 years, you find out why. The two men, Patrick (O' Connor) and Art (Faist) used to be best friends and doubles partners until their relationship changed when they met a tennis prodigy named Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). After competing for her affections for a bit, Patrick goes onto date her. He elects to go pro right away while she goes off to college at Stanford where Art also happens to be. Tashi eventually suffers a career-ending injury and breaks up with Patrick since he wasn't there for her during her of time need while Art was. Years later, Tashi has become an in-demand coach and ends up having a chance meeting with Art-who has now gone pro-at a restaurant following a tournament and after catching up for a while, he asks her to be his coach. She accepts and they begin dating shortly after. Eventually, they marry and have a daughter and through Tashi's coaching, Art becomes a 3x Grand Slam Champion. Patrick, meanwhile, has flamed off the tour and spends his time sleeping in his car and using dating apps as way to secure lodging for the night as he travels to regional tournaments where he tries to win wild card entries into major tournaments. After Art undergoes a string of embarrassing losses, Tashi enters him into the New Rochelle tournament to restore his confidence and this ends up putting him on a collision course with his old friend/rival Patrick.
It's a story about the ego, drive, jealously, love, pettiness, obsession and gamesmanship that goes into playing sports and how all of the garbage that the spirit of competition brings out has a way of bleeding over into the personal lives of the people that play these games at the highest level. Guadagnino is having the time of his life using tennis as an instrument to frame this wildly unhealthy love triangle with his use of propulsive editing, frantic camerawork and crunchy sound design to highlight just how meaningful this silly game is to the people that play it and all three leads do an exceptional job of showing just how fiercely committed they are to their pursuit of winning by any means necessary in each of their distinctly devious, obsessive performances. This is easily one of the distinct, spellbinding sports movies I've ever seen and the best thing I've seen in 2024 so far by a considerable margin. Please go check this out ASAP if you have the chance to.
Grade: A
Boy Kills World: One of the last things I expected to see in 2024 was an homage to the works of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, but alas here we are. While it does share some clear connections to their films in the form of a tone that can only be described as a hyperactive live-action cartoon and an onslaught of heavily stylized graphic violence, Boy Kills World-which marks the feature debut for German director Mortiz Mohr-is far too tame to be this generation's Crank or Gamer. What made those films special is that they were just wall-to-wall chaos that were designed to assault the viewer's senses with over-the-top nonsense for 90 straight minutes and Boy Kills World just doesn't have the level of anarchic tenacity or unapologetic grime behind it. The revenge story at its core is never really all that engaging-especially when it starts to lean heavier on the emotional hook in the final act, the dick jokes and sophomoric namecalling that constitutes the comedy here falls flat about 97% of the time and the pacing outside of the action sequences is uneven at best. Still, the video game-inspired fight scenes are kinetic and frequent enough to give this film just enough of a spark to make it worth watching.
Grade: B-
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