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Review: ‘The Vigil’

IFC's New Demonic Horror Is Immersed In Judaism

By
Jake Sokolsky
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IFC’s latest thriller The Vigil puts a new spin on an often-told tale. Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) is a man that has lost his way. He used to be a very religious Jew and part of the Orthodox community in Borough Park – a Hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn. After the tragic death of his little brother, Yakov has fallen on hard times. He is struggling to pay the bills and can’t get a job to try and alleviate the monetary stress. He is seeing a Psychiatrist to try and work through his issues and is on medication to calm his PTSD. One evening his former rabbi, Reb Shulem (Menashe Lustig), approaches him with a quick job. Yakov reluctantly accepts, the money was too enticing to turn down. Reb needs Yakov to work as an overnight Shomer for a member of their community that has just passed.

A Shomer is someone who watches the body and recites psalms to comfort the soul and protect it from evil. Usually the Shomer is a family member or friend, but the deceased didn’t have someone. The deceased’s wife, Mrs. Litvak (Lynn Cohen), is struggling with dementia and can’t be Shomer. Reb tells Yakov that the last Shomer left because he was afraid, something everyone wants to hear before watching a dead body overnight. Almost immediately, things take a turn. Yakov realizes that there is a dark presence in the house and the first Shomer made a wise decision. With Mr. Litvak now deceased, the presence is looking for a new host. The demon is attracted to broken people that are attached to some terrible pain they can’t overcome. A pain exactly like what Yakov is carrying.

The Vigil is the first feature length film from writer/director Keith Thomas and it is an impressive debut. Thomas doesn’t reinvent the wheel with The Vigil, but does enough to set the film apart. Stories of demons and possessions are typically told through a Christian lens. Thomas fills The Vigil with Jewish lore and customs, giving it a unique feel. Thomas does a great job with his camera angels and music/noises throughout the film. Thomas’s choices serve to build dread and an ominous atmosphere to the film. His framing of Yakov paired with the perfect eerie music makes you sit on the edge of your seat, dreading what is about to come. You see just enough of the room or there is only enough light for you to wonder what horrors are around Yakov. Every creak or deep breathe in the film can make you jump from the anticipation.

The Vigil is a character study, focusing on Yakov and the turmoil he is going through. The Mazzik feeds on this pain making Yakov relive it. Thomas weaves in flashbacks and visions to paint the full picture of what Yakov is going through. The film wouldn’t work without powerful performances and Davis and Cohen deliver. A majority of the film takes place inside one house with Davis as the singular focus. His acting is on point and incredibly believable. Cohen gives a haunting performance that I won’t soon forget. There is something terrifying about frail old women in a room full of mannequin heads in a haunted house. The main issue I had with The Vigil is that I wanted to see more. The film could have benefited from another 15-20 minutes of scares. The Vigil is absolutely still worth a watch, but it falls short of a must see.

The Vigil is available in select theaters, on digital platforms, and VOD February 26th.

Review: ‘Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry”

Documentary Looks At The Pop Star As A Reflection Of Her Generation

By
Cortland Jacoby
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Billie Eilish has to be one of the most successful teenagers of all time. With six Grammys, over 75 million Instagram followers, and sold out shows all over the world (before COVID of course), it was inevitable that the dark and macabre popstar would have her own documentary. In the same vein as Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Katy Perry: Part of Me, Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry offers viewers an inside look into the life, struggles, and joys of being a young famous musician, but this examination of the first real Gen Z superstar reveals something much deeper about her generation.

Following Billie over the course of two years, RJ Cutler captures Eilish’s trajectory to fame from playing night clubs to selling out stadiums. Early on we see Billie and Finneas O’Connell,  her brother and musical partner, sitting in his childhood bedroom working on licks and lines that will soon be hit songs from her album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go.” Director RJ Cutler smartly places those moments in the very first scene, hinting to the viewer where this young singer is headed. In the same scene, Billie shows us her journal full of dark lyrics and doodles of little slinking monsters on every page, indicating her pubic persona is very real.

Cutler has a knack for following and chronicling the lives of the rich and powerful with last year’s Jim Belushi documentary Belushi and 2009’s The September Issue, following Vogue editor anna Wintour and her team creating the coveted September issue of Vogue. He gives us an intimate look into Billie’s life without crossing a line. We learn she had a boyfriend for a while, who like most first boyfriends was not the most attentive. We see how she learned to drive, get overwhelmed by meeting record executives, agonizing over negative comments, freaking out over meeting the popstar she looked up to. Culter finds the normal and genius in Eilish, reveal a smart witty artist who is deeply conflicted over the path she has meticulously curated for herself.

Cutler’s one downfall is the film too jammed packed with these moments. With a two hour and twenty minute runtime, its hard not to question every piece of footage that made the cut.

Eilish, who publicly is attached to the hip of her brother, spends most of the documentary away from him. The doc is specifically about her and not their relationship. Finneas really disappears after the making of her first album, popping up occasionally but leaving Billie to interact with her parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell. Her mother, greatly determined to both keep Billie grounded and successful, relents about how hard it is for teenagers right now – how aware they are of their own trauma and circumstance.

Her father Patrick, though doesn’t say much throughout the documentary, choosing to hang out and interact with the family’s scene stealing dog, Pepper. After Billie finally gets her driver’s license and drives off in her dream car, her dad gives a beautiful speech to the camera about trying to keep kids as grounded as possible. It’s in this moment its clear, that the success of Billie Eilish stems from her family and without them a very different star emerges.

The triumph of is how it ends. You know Billie Ellish and her brother win Grammys, the two create the next James Bond anthem “No Time To Die,” – to put it mildly her dreams come true. However Cutler leaves you with a foreboding feeling amidst Billie’s success. Her problems are still very much there: her Tourette’s, her perpetual need to be loved and accepted by her fans, her depression. Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry ends with the idea everything that Billie went through was for something – but that those demons will continue.

You can watch Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry on Apple TV+. Catch the trailer below.

Man Of Steel Reboot Will Reportedly Tell A “Black Superman Story”

By
Travis Hopson
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As expected, the news that Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Superman film has led to many different bits of information coming from different sources. One of the questions left dangling in the initial report was whether this was DC Films wiping the Superman slate clean, or if Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill would continue to be involved. THR chimes in and says this is definitely being set up as a “Black Superman story”, so unless I’ve gone color blind that means Cavill is out.

A “Black Superman story” is something Warner Bros. considered with Michael B. Jordan just a couple of years ago, but it never got off the ground. However, that was 2019 and we were just a couple of years removed from Justice League and it was still likely that Cavill would return to the role. Two more years have passed, DC Films is in a much better, more diverse place than it was, and the idea of working with Jordan may hold greater appeal.

It’s also possible Warner Bros. seeks out a different Black actor to play Superman. If he weren’t already playing Hawkman in Black Adam, I’d kill for Aldis Hodge to get a gig like that. The film, which will be produced by JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot, might not even be part of the DCEU. It sounds like something that could exist in the same alternate realm as Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. And if that’s the case, Cavill could be sticking around.

Funko Reveals ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Pops Featuring Black Suit Superman, Darkseid, Desaad, And More

By
Travis Hopson
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Far be it from Funko to miss out on the hype for Zack Snyder’s Justice League! While the 2017 film had its own line of figures, I don’t think they hold a candle to the Pops that are coming for the long-awaited Snyder Cut.

Four awesome new Funkos will be made available for preorder next week as part of the HBO Max release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. This early-release window is only for DC Universe Infinite subscribers. Exclusive to the site’s DC Shop will be a 4-pack featuring Darkseid, black suit Superman, Desaad, and Diana Prince. They come in a unique black-and-white metallic color design. Hopefully, this means full-color versions will be available through other outlets.

We’ll update this post when there’s more info on availability. Zack Snyder’s Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18th!

‘Godzilla Vs. Kong’ Clip Shows Kaiju Devastation On The High Seas

By
Travis Hopson
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If there’s someone to feel sorry for in Godzilla vs. Kong, it’s definitely not the gigantic, iconic kaiju slugging it out on the big screen for the first time in sixty years. No, it’s the people. As we’ve seen in previous MonsterVerse films, it’s the humans who always wind up in the middle of the carnage, and that’s no different in the upcoming blockbuster’s first clip.

Released by director Adam Wingard during IGN Fan Fest, the clip shows what IGN says is the first time we “see Godzilla MEET King Kong for the first time.” The footage doesn’t actually support that, but that’s alright. What we do get is Godzilla taking out fighter jets (and thus, killing the pilots) with a single swipe of his tail, then dragging a destroyed boat underwater after its anchors get stuck in his armor plates. Well, damn, they’re dead, too!

Kong is there, too, apparently being transported from Skull Island, but he doesn’t do much other than scream out in frustration while Godzilla lurks underneath. I’d be upset over this, but I think we’ve already seen quite enough of these two punching one another.

Godzilla vs. Kong opens in theaters and HBO Max on March 31st.

‘Ticket To Paradise’: George Clooney And Julia Roberts Together Again In Rom-Com From ‘Mamma Mia 2’ Director

By
Travis Hopson
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George Clooney and Julia Roberts in a rom-com? Seems a bit like a step down for their careers, doesn’t it? Well, maybe, but not if they’re in that rom-com together. The duo are reuniting for Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy from Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again director Ol Parker.

Deadline reports Clooney and Roberts will star in Ticket to Paradise, a rom-com about a divorced couple who head to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they did 25 years earlier. The film will be directed by Parker, who also co-wrote the script with Daniel Pipski.

Obviously, Clooney and Roberts are two of the biggest stars in the world and this movie is made bigger by having them on board. They’ve worked together before, most-famously in the Oceans trilogy, but also the 2016 thriller Money Monster, which I bet you forgot about because it’s totally forgettable despite doing well at the box office.  They’re also just really good friends, so you know they’re going to make this fun.

Ticket to Paradise shoots later this year.

‘Shazam’ Sequel Casts ‘West Side Story’ Actress Rachel Zegler In “Key Role”

By
Travis Hopson
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If you’re a 16-year-old actress just starting out in Hollywood, there’s hardly a better way to launch a career than by first working with Steven Spielberg, followed by a major superhero movie. For Rachel Zegler that’s exactly what is happening. She was chosen from a field of thousands to star in Spielberg’s West Side Story film, and now Zegler has landed a key role in Shazam: Fury of the Gods.

THR reports Zegler has been cast in the Shazam sequel, taking a “key role” opposite stars Asher Angel, Zachary Levi, and Jack Dylan Grazer. Given her youth, we can probably assume she’s a friend or love interest to Billy Batson, or perhaps even a rival? I’d love to see her play someone like Chain Lightning, who is roughly the same age as the other kids, has powers that can seriously jack Shazam up, and suffers from multiple personality disorder.

Zegler is definitely a star on the rise. While we haven’t really seen her on the big screen yet, we know she could do a bang-up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if an AOC movie ever gets made.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods opens June 2nd 2023.

Ta-Nehisi Coates To Write ‘Superman’ Reboot Produced By JJ Abrams

By
Travis Hopson
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Wait a minute…might we actually get that Superman movie starring Michael B. Jordan? Maybe I’m jumping the gun and drawing connections where there are none, but with the news that acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has been hired to pen a new Superman movie, one has to ask these questions. Why? Because few are more integral in charting the Black experience than Coates, and putting his brilliance to a Superman movie sounds absolutely incredible.

The news comes from Shadow and Act, who say Coates will write a Superman reboot produced by JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot label. So the elephant in the room: What’s up with Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill? Do they have any part to play in all of this? Well, we don’t know, but it’s clear that DC Films is taking the Man of Steel in an interesting new direction.

“To be invited into the DC Extended Universe by Warner Bros., DC Films and Bad Robot is an honor,” said Coates. “I look forward to meaningfully adding to the legacy of America’s most iconic mythic hero.”

JJ Abrams added, “There is a new, powerful and moving Superman story yet to be told. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with the brilliant Mr. Coates to help bring that story to the big screen, and we’re beyond thankful to the team at Warner Bros. for the opportunity.”

That sounds like Snyder and Cavill won’t be involved, doesn’t it?

Coates explored issues of racism in the United States with his bestselling book, Between the World and Me, and has tackled the issue as well as writer of Marvel’s Black Panther comics. His voice, along with previous writer Christopher Priest, helped shape the way we look at the character now.

Exciting times. Now, somebody get Michael B. Jordan on the horn!

Review: ‘My Zoe’

With Julie Delpy's Scientific Melodrama, Some Ideas Are Better Left Off The Screen

By
Cortland Jacoby
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Scientific advancement and ethics have always been debated on screen. In the new film My Zoe, written, directed and starring Julie Delphy, the pain of raising a child combine and inevitable scientific advancement combine to try to demonstrate the lengths a mother will go to protect and be with her child.

In My Zoe, Delphy plays Isabelle, a newly divorced mother living in Berlin and working as a geneticist. Her ex-husband (Richard Armitege) is a loving father who uses their child as a way to control his ex-wife. When something life changing happens to their daughter Zoe, Isabelle must determine whether a life without Zoe is worth living or if she can use technology to change it.

Delpy is almost directing two movies here. The first a family melodrama, focusing on two toxic parents battling for custody. In the film’s last forty percent, it switches to sci -fi drama on the ethics of cloning. That latter forty percent, feels completely rushed and instead focusing on the moral intricacies of creating a cloned child, Delpy completely brushes past it. As a writer, Delpy is not able to capture the nuance of the subject matter in the film’s 105 minute runtime. Stories that flip genres part way through always do better as a novel or even a tv show where more of the characters’ motivations can be worked out further. The Delpy version feels rushed and not left open to debate, like a melodramatic Black Mirror movie.

My Zoe is full of solid supporting performances. Richard Armitage is able to make the narcissistic and toxic ex-husband into something actually relatable and someone endearing. However that might be easily done considering Delphy’s own performance is often one note after the first twenty minutes of the film. Daniel Brühl and Gemma Arterton, two underrated but always reliable actors, are completely misused in the film, regulated to that final forty percent. This is where the miniseries format would have elevated the piece. Used even less is the great Lindsay Duncan, appearing in only two scenes. Her role as Isabelle’s mother seems to effect neither plot or character development, begging the almost unforgivable question of an actor of Duncan’s caliber, was she even needed in the first place?

The concept of My Zoe works in theory. It’s an intricate story worth telling, but film is not the medium to tell it. On the technical side, Delphy delivers a solidly edited and visually constructed film. In theory, this film would work and be groundbreaking. Unfortunately My Zoe’s execution keeps it from resurrection.

My Zoe is in select theaters now and on demand May 25th. Watch the trailer below.

Review: ‘Crisis’

Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, And Evangeline Lilly Lead Nicholas Jarecki's Ambitious Drug War Thriller

By
Travis Hopson
-

Another movie about the opioid epidemic? They’re coming at us fast and furious, with most tackling the issue on either a micro or macro level to varying degrees of success. Nicholas Jarecki attempts both with Crisis, a multi-faceted action-drama offering multiple storylines in the vein of Syriana and Steven Soderbergh’s seminal drug war film, Traffic. The approach works to identify many facets of an evolving national healthcare issue, from the personal all the way up to the business and governmental levels. It’s a frequently gripping multi-faceted plan of attack that Jarecki has come up with, even if we’re left feeling he has taken on too much.

Crisis is bolstered by a cast that any filmmaker would kill for. Oscar winner Gary Oldman, Evangeline Lilly, and Armie Hammer (I personally thought his off-camera problems would hinder the film’s release. It might’ve actually helped.) lead the way as principles in three interconnected narratives. The film begins like a scene out of Sicario, with a fentanyl smuggler taken down by police as he tries to cross the Canadian border. Pulling on this thread introduces us to DEA agent Jake Kelly (Hammer), who is THIS CLOSE to nailing a Montreal drug kingpin he’s been working deep cover for a year. Further down the line is Claire (Lilly), a former addict herself, she sees the opioid crisis hit her Detroit home in an all-new way when her seemingly-perfect son disappears one day. Connected to all of this is professor Tyrone Brower (Oldman), whose lab discovers that a supposed non-addictive pain killer making its way through the FDA is actually quite addictive, and extremely deadly, if misused. But his lab is very well paid, and Tyrone must decide whether being truthful is worth losing that funding and possibly his career.

As far as sprawling social dramas go, Crisis delivers the facts while also having a clear and passionate point of view, something the director may have gotten from his brother Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, The House I Live In, which also tackled the drug epidemic and biases within a system meant to help addicts.  So we get purely villainous characters like Luke Evans’ smug pharma exec, who does everything including bribery to convince Tyrone to keep quiet. Failing that, big money starts getting thrown around to discredit Tyrone, professionally and personally, while he finds himself screaming into the wind about how this is “the biggest public health crisis since tobacco!”

There are plenty of clunky, melodramatic scenes like that one as Jarecki threads the needle between fact-based drama and Hollywood-style thriller. Jake’s cop, of course, has a personal stake in this because his sister (Lily-Rose Depp) is an addict who is shuffled in-and-out of rehab in a vicious cycle recently highlighted in the movie Body Brokers. Claire, upon hearing of her son’s fate, sets out on a detective mission of of her own, which threatens to not only upend Jake’s investigation but get herself killed. While fairly generic with tropes of the genre, there’s an energetic snap that keeps Crisis from becoming a dry, message-heavy exercise.  Jarecki keeps the tentacles of this massive opioid scandal simple enough and fast-paced enough that audiences can easily understand without experiencing too much drag.

Only Oldman’s plot struggles to feel connected to the larger whole, perhaps because Tyrone’s struggles are more systemic rather than street-level. He faces the juggernaut of Big Pharma, but also his school’s dean (Greg Kinnear) who considers Tyrone a friend but wants to keep those donations pouring in. With so many storylines converging, plus a few more that feel extraneous, Crisis generalizes in broad strokes and fails to shed light on anything we don’t already know.

It’s been a long nine-year wait since Jarecki’s previous film, the gripping financial world thriller Arbitrage. In that time, Jarecki’s stylistic confidence has never wavered, nor has he grown timid in putting his point of view out there. Crisis is a big, bold effort and while it’s hardly groundbreaking on the subject of opioids, Jarecki’s investment in the material and the commitment he’s able to get from his actors is such that it better not be years before we see his critical eye on another timely subject.

Crisis opens in theaters today, February 26th, followed by a home release on March 5th.

 

 

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