Wayne’s World: Penelope Spheeris and the Amplified Femininity Back in February of 1992, a ‘Saturday Night Live’ spinoff head-banged its way into theaters in the form of Wayne’s World, an ode to music and personal creativity that caused a “Schwing!” to be heard from around the world. It’s a sound that carried with it an affirmatively virile pelvic thrust, one that’s used to rate notable women – their photo enlarged to poster size –acting as its own gesticulating male gaze. With its sexual utterance, forever engrained in the pop canon, comes the sound of money – also brought forth into the cartoon cash lexicon by our film – its “Cha-ching” indicating a tremendous box office success. This so happens to play to the tune of both money and industry sexism, frequent collaborators that have been a discordant scratch on the records of female directors since the birth of Hollywood. Marking the 25th anniversary of Wayne and Garth’s own cable access show turned film; Wayne’s World cemented Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as a carpool companion, and director Penelope Spheeris as a successful female powerhouse. Spheeris, a trailblazing director who embodied the sound of a generation with The Decline of Western Civilization, came on to direct Wayne’s World after writing a few ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits with Albert Brooks. Although she would go on to direct two Golden Age television remakes and a spiritual successor to ‘Tommy Boy,’ Spheeris was ultimately prevented from returning to the basement-set in Aurora, Illinois by Mike Myer’s, his thinly veiled machismo masquerading as Hollywood clout. She was never given the creative opportunities either, ones that typically come from turning a $20 million dollar couch-skit into a $121 million dollar domestic riff, resorting to the comedic corner she was muscled into by an industry cranked to 11 with executive testosterone. Despite its release into almost 2,000 domestic theaters, a number that toppled the draws of buddy-surf crime caper Point Break– another paramount success for a female director – Spheeris was never green-lit to expand outside the comedic confines that distributor Paramount had established. Recalling her time working with the studio, Spheeris told Vanity Fair back in February, “I don’t think of the world as funny, but that’s maybe what makes the comedy in the films work. But I wish I would’ve been able to do other kinds of films after Wayne’s World.” Spheeris’ father, a Greek immigrant who owned a traveling circus and was a side-show strong man, was killed during a racial dispute when she was only six, later bouncing around to different trailer parks with her mother, who took to bouts of alcoholism in an already unstable mental condition. “I interpreted my mother’s lack of interest in my life as a lack of love,” she recounts to The Guardian back in 2015. Similarly it wouldn’t be difficult to interpret Spheeris’ lack of interest in comedies as a lack of humor, though for anyone that has seen Wayne’s World, it would be an egregious statement that has perhaps been discriminately labeled towards one too many women. What makes Wayne’s World work, similarly to the dynamic intricacies reflected in Bigelow’s Point Break duo – undercover cop turned surfer Johnny Utah and surfer sage Bodhi – is Spheeris’ ability to amplify the masculine frailty in a way that fine tunes the feminist point of view. Our own duo, waxing philosophically about the attractiveness of Bugs Bunny in drag while waiting for the overhead adrenaline rush of a landing plane, observe the women around them in the same light as unobtainable objects. Garth pines over his dream woman from afar, one who feels out of place slinging late night donuts at a diner named after a local hockey star, while Wayne dreams of Cassandra, a badass bassist in a rock n’ roll bubble, Gary Wright’s ‘Dream Weaver’ playing overhead. For Wayne, it’s an immediate lust that mirrors a ’64 Stratocaster guitar, imprisoned in a glass case at the local shop with a price tag that isn’t quite within his league. “It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine,” a trance induced utterance Wayne directs towards each, and for him, they both don’t quite fit his budget. It’s a male fantasy played for laughs, one that Mike Myer’s writes and stars for the camera – at times breaking on through to the other side – though it’s Penelope Spheeris’ seriousness that keeps Myer’s comedic note from becoming an over-extended jam session. The responsiveness to Wayne eclipses the male point of view, one that never really diminishes our few empowered female characters; he adores and objectifies from afar, his words replacing the male gaze that would potentially dominate under the hands of a less self-assured and empathetic director. We get the impression that Wayne tosses the women in his life aside when he’s found no use for them, evident in Stacy, a well-intentioned insecure woman who never quite grasps the concept of a break-up. Sure, she might be a psycho hose beast to Wayne, but she’s one that Spheeris paints with shades of complexity, in one scene framing her behind his new object of obsession Cassandra, her own feminist perspective constructing Stacy’s shaky narrative. In an interview with Forbes in February, Spheeris stated that “….I do better with buddy movies, male testosterone movies,” and beneath the product peddling and corporate take-over is a subverted buddy film, where waves are traded in for air waves. While Wayne and Garth embody the Laurel and Hardy of the 30’s, the Curtis/Lemmon of the 50’s, and the Utah/Bodhi of the 90’s, its Spheeris own feminist lens that separates them from an amplification of machismo. Just in the same way Kathryn Bigelow was able to impact Point Break with a crushing sense of male embodied adrenaline, revealing an aching fragility between her beach buddies, Spheeris is able to pick Wayne’s very strings with a woman’s hand.

The Night of the Hunter and the Fear of Christian Antipathy When director Charles Laughton’s first and sadly final film, ‘The Night of the Hunter’, was released back in the summer of 1955, it marked an irrevocable burden on the mind of one of Britain’s most applauded stage and screen actors. Laughton, who trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, starred in more than 50 works of film, both short and theatrical, before stepping behind the camera to adapt Davis Grubb’s novel of the same name. That burden that caused Laughton to abandon the director’s chair came in the form of critical disdain and audience dismissal upon release of his debut, an outcome that many believed to be caused by little to no marketing. Given the subject matter, themes and tones stalking every frame, marketing it to a wide audience in 1955 would have been a difficult and daunting task, even if we weren’t judging its history through decades of reflection. Though no matter how many lobby cards filled theaters, television spots small screens, or write-ups newspapers, the new Christianity of the Eisenhower era wasn’t ready for such a film.

There’s the stalker, a murderous hand of god that roams the Ohio countryside preaching the cataclysm of sinners, predominately women and their sexual proclivities. The two orphans eluding the preacher along a hauntingly serene riverbed, a sound stage Laughton had constructed as to manipulate sights and sounds. The heavy tones and shadows that layered the film beyond simply another film noir, the lighting bouncing off its expressionistic architecture like geometric thunder. Sex wasn’t exactly a taboo subject back then, with the first issue of Playboy hitting newsstands in 1953, a mere two years before Laughton made it the focal point behind damnation, but it was years from being deemed fit as table talk. While the world had its Monroe and Mansfield’s, the visual stimuli brushing shoulders with every name in cinema, it also had the one thing that stretched higher than the Hollywood hills; God. There’s a scene early in The Night of the Hunter that has John (Billy Chapin), our hunted child, reciting a passage from the bible to his younger sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), the light of a kerosene street lamp casting a looming silhouette against their bedroom wall. “Just a man” John says before hopping into bed, the imminent danger not quite apparent. It’s a threat that would slowly and persistently make its way into the children’s lives, guided by a hymnal song – “Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms” - that threatened more than the lives of two children. This hymn, gaily sung by Robert Mitchum, was written in 1887 by Anthony J. Showalter, who was inspired by a phrase in the Book of Deuteronomy – the fifth book in the Christian Old Testament – that reads “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” It’s a hymn that, like the preacher, considers itself guiding and benevolent, a spiritual observer of the great land that pricks the ears of those lost. The further John and Pearl run, the closer this song comes to being a warning of the self-righteous slaughter that plagues their path, a fear of the hand of god, rising up and striking them down from above. Under the Eisenhower administration, fearing Russian missile strikes, people turned to the only sanctuaries they knew–theater and church–to relieve the fear for Russian missile strikes and combat the Communistic atheism. As God moved further into the beliefs of Americans, it too moved swiftly to the aid of John and Pearl, kneeling before Harry’s mighty sword – or phallic switchblade – in the form of cinematographer Stanley Cortez’s angularly gothic shots of rural Americana. Working with deep shadows that highlighted the dark thematic elements, Cortez framed ‘The Night of the Hunter’ with triangular shapes, their three equal sides suggesting what it means to be three in one: the son (John), the father (Harry), and the Holy Ghost (Rachel, an aged caretaker of lost souls, played by Lillian Gish). Each plays their own believed role of God, with the preacher blasphemously masquerading as a false prophet, a bearer of bad fruit that Rachel hints at in the opening credits: “And then the good Lord went on to say, ‘Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly, they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Wherefore by their fruits, ye shall know them.” Laughton and Cortez who also worked on Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons’, employed the use of German Expressionism, a post-WWI movement that explored oblique lines and sharp, heightened angles, often painted on canvas. Combining these gaunt expressionistic lines with the drenched qualities of film noirs shadows, Laughton, along with Art Director Hilyard Brown (Cleopatra), highlighted the many geometric shapes of mid-century American architecture. For many Christians, the use of triangles symbolizes a sort of spiritual doorway that is considered as a place of idol Worship in the Old Testament – which our preacher embraced through hymn – that saw demonic influences and activities. Equally, sacrilege could be unveiled in a scene that has John and his friend Bernie (James Gleason), an old drunkard with a good heart, killing a fish after scooping it up from the very river that swept our orphans downstream. The idea of the fish within Christian faith distinguished brethren from foe, a marker for like ideologies throughout Greece and Italy. Subsequently, the killing of the fish by John and Bernie can be seen as a rejection of the very faith that was sweeping a terrified nation, one that kneeled before the credence of cinema and faith. Perhaps the artistic interpretations turned away audiences, many of whom were clutching Christianity as a substitute for Red Fear. Perhaps it were the impiety that radiated from the script, one that Laughton reworked himself with James Agee (The African Queen). Perhaps all of this is mere speculation, a casualty of coincidence that floundered on the lack of promotion by producer Paul Gregory (The Naked and the Dead). Flourishing decades after its initial release thanks to the preservation by the National Film Registry, The Night of the Hunter faired so poorly in the states that Laughton never returned to helm another film. Ironically, in 1955, the same year of its release, the phrase “In God We Trust” became immortalized on paper money across the country.

The visual effects wizardry of THE VOID

Review: The Void (2017) The Void Runtime: 90 minutes Directed by Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski We might have Ti West to blame for this massive resurgence in 80’s injected horror films. When he came creeping out of the devils womb in 2009 with the throwback gem ‘House of the Devil’, audiences were treated to a satanic morsel they weren’t even sure they were hungry for. Hitting every note on the Walkman, Ti West’s debut feature gave horror fans a reason to revisit one of the grandest and gravest decades in the genres sordid history. Brandishing a look that mirrors ‘The Amityville Horror’ with a feel that captures the ambiguous cult terror of Dario Argento’s work, West helped introduce many to the contenders of early satanic 80’s satanic cinema, which is precisely where our film steps in. A circuit gem, ‘The Void’ first began making waves when it premiered at Fantastic Fest, later expanding through a limited release after it ensnared audiences even further at Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival. And what better of a festival to garner accolades than a city that regularly highlights its very own Canadian darlings, with Lowell Dean’s ‘Wolf Cop’ splashing in the shallow end of celluloid, along with Denis Villeneuve’s heavy hitter ‘Arrival’. It’s a circuit that applauses its own cinema, as well as one that embraces lower budget genre fares, which is a camp that ‘The Void’ falls squarely in. Taking cues from much beloved but often scrutinized upon release films such as John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ and Fulci’s ‘City of the Living Dead’ – hinting more at themes than visual cues – ‘The Void’ drops us into a poorly staffed hospital, where one of its nurses is ineffectively in training (Ellen Wong), and soon becomes the focal point of demonic possession after a man (Evan Stern) is taken in by a local sheriff. As the hospital begins to experiences the onslaught perpetrated by the cloaked beings surrounding the hospital, its survivors must band together to put an end to what may be a breach of our dimension. Now it’s understandable if demonic, dimension, and beings are keywords that immediately put you off, as this type of horror has been handled many times, though it’s really a sub-genre that can’t get old if placed in the right hands. Unfortunately for us, ‘The Void’ is not that film. On paper it’s got everything a retro horror enthusiast could ask for – practical effects, blood soaked and dimly lit corridors, anti-religious undertones, and grizzly deaths. It’s a formula that has been embraced with affection by gorehounds and splatter fans alike for decades, which might give rhyme and reason for such a massive retrolution (I don’t know if this has been coined yet, but I’ll just go with it.) Where directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski (Father’s Day) go awry is in attempting one too many character expositions and arch’s amidst writhing tentacles. Our central leads, Sheriff Daniels (Aaron Poole) and Nurse Allison Fraser (Kathleen Munroe), now divorced after a miscarriage tore them apart, are given enough flashbacks and hints at what once was that we feel an emotional link between them; they observe their pain and also their past love with subtlety that we begin to want more of it. Instead, we are bombarded with supporting characters who create a sort of vacuum, sucking the life out of something with soul, that all the copious amounts of gunk and decay begin feeling as if it’s meant to cover up rather than reveal. There are the rifle-toting backwoods locals (Daniel Fathers and Mik Byskov) who seem privy to the evil doings that are overtaking the town. The local sergeant (Art Hindle) whose soul existence is to bust balls before becoming fodder for the special effects team. Then there’s Richard (Kenneth Walsh), the head doctor whose paternal and protective instincts shine a dim light on our leads, right before being picked off and given the ‘Event Horizon’ treatment, waxing prophetic in an eye-roll induced character arch. I understand paying films to a bygone era, but ‘The Void’ tosses all of its chips onto the table, showing us what horror once was rather than what it can be. There’s only so much we can take before shit hits the fan and horror whiplash sets in. As our survivors begin making their way into the hospitals basement, sections of it not existing in the original blueprint, we are treated to some brilliant tension beset by early survival horror games such as Resident Evil. Making their way further in, we are treated to a demonic chamber of contorted bodies and flayed cadavers. It’s a sight to behold, as practical effects wizardry begins unraveling right in front of us, the creatures of ‘The Void’ stepping in pools of blood and floating over enough mangled bodies it would make the Doom generation weep. Unfortunately that quickly dissolves into one too many quick cuts and strobe lighting that focusing on the action becomes its own decent into hell. It’s a technical choice that strips away a wealth of appreciation that could be poured into how cool the creatures actually look, which isn’t to say we don’t get our fill. One of the earlier transformations consist of a nurse turned scalpel wielding hell-spawns becoming a grotesque horse like being after being shot and left for dead. It’s a startling and awe-induced scene that helms the films more gore-thrilling moments, with the nurses face hanging in front as it stumbles around. We witness a sight that’s becoming rarer nowadays, as computer generated effects replace the artistic molding of practical magic, that ‘The Void’ deserves applause for its ambition. However, it becomes an obscured visual feast with its oversaturation of shadows and unnecessary quick-cuts that it winds up feeling more like an afterthought than a necessity. What we do get plenty of is an idea that seems pieced together by a fondness and love for a genre, rather than an ingenuity and comprehension for the medium. There’s a core idea that feels muddled by perhaps too much ambition, attempting to tie-in multiple characters with similar backstories, which grounds the films themes but manages to lose focus of its subjects along the way. Where Ti West made us want to simultaneously re-watch ‘House of the Devil’ and revisit the babysitter sub-genre it pays respect to, Gillespie and Kostanski only drive us to take a look at what made the films it mirrors so engaging. While it’s difficult to praise ‘The Void’ for being the masterclass in horror it’s lauded as, it is easy to applaud its attempt at retroism, one that deserves to be seen. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself wanting to watch the numerous films it regards only half-way through its 90-minute run time. Then again, who knows; like ‘The Thing’ and so many audiences upon its release, perhaps it will find its stride with me. It just isn’t today.

Le Samourai and the Caged Warrior Cigarette smoke hovers above him like the morning fog after an early battle. A light grey fedora rests atop a stone gaze that pierces the air around him, searching for warriors that aren’t there. A tan trench coat is the armor, protecting an exterior exuding the particular cool that has befallen the French New Wave for almost a decade, cutting through celluloid with samurai precision. It’s the kind of cool that Akira Kurosawa encapsulated since Drunken Angel (1948) had shown the world that he wasn’t just katana’s and kimono’s, or the cool that Seijun Suzuki fires with a single jazz-note using a loaded gun in Tokyo Drifter (1966) just one year earlier. Genre is not necessarily the common ground where these films meet, but the roles portrayed by the gangsters that disappear amidst the urban battlegrounds. These aren’t men imitating gangsters, but gangsters becoming samurais, their one hand resting on the hilt of a gun that slices through the night with a piercing definitude.

Where Toshiro Mifune carried with him the wildfire of a thousand suns, our samurai Jef Costello (Alain Delon) holsters the isolation of a sheltered man; a single jazz note that has left the cool of the club in search of harmony. Yet in the city streets, the only type of peace comes in the form of constant running, from the men who hired Jef to make a hit, and the police officer (Francois Perier) who believes his alibi (Natalie Delon) to be a false cover. Similarly to Delon, Mifune was never without his loneliness, an alibi in and of itself, realized through heavy drinking (Drunken Angel) and manic behavior (Rashomon), a frequenter to the outcast warrior. Delon portrays Jef with a cold exterior that deeply yearns to break away from his life, symbolized through a lone bird that flutters between the barred confines of a cage, resting in the center of his minimalist apartment. Opening the film is an epigraph ascribed to the bushido, a moralistic code of conduct the samurai adhered to, that states “There is no solitude greater than that of the samurai unless it be that of a tiger in the jungle…. perhaps.” There’s a hesitant sense of confidence in this, the “perhaps” lingering long after the words fade to black. Jean-Pierre Melville (Army of Shadows) operates off this wavering confidence, infusing it into Jef’s rigid presence. Before leaving a dimly lit apartment, its occupying gangsters eyeing the poker chips that rest stacked in front of them, Jef declares that he “never loses. Not really.” If we were to take this brazen declaration at face value, it wouldn’t be difficult to see the fault in the armor that carries with it the bushido epigraph, our hitman a mirror image of a caged bird rather than a mighty tiger. Despite Jef living alone, acting alone, and ultimately feeling alone, there is a looming sense of feminine company throughout Le Samourai, a presence that is linked more to seppuku, the ritualistic act of suicide, than any alibi. Early on our hitman, commandeering a stolen vehicle, makes eye contact with a strange woman in an adjacent car, Jef’s emotionless exterior clinging to our eyes like rain on glass. Though nothing is said, it becomes abundantly clear that the female gaze plays an intrinsically crucial role in Jef’s life. The only alibi against his investigated hit on a nightclub owner is Jane (Nathalie Delon), a woman whom he may or may not love, though we know that he needs her. The only clear witness to the murder is jazz pianist Caty Rosier (played with a shy observance by Cathy Rosier), who denies that it was Jef that she saw exit the scene of the crime. These acts of denial force Jef to run hopelessly through the streets and subways of his own prison, realizing, too late, that even birdcages have corners. There’s a moment towards the end of the film that defines Jef’s ultimate decision towards self-sacrifice, where his winged companion malts its feathers due to the stress of plain clothed officers infiltrating his apartment in an attempt to tap it. We become aware, through a man who hides under a hardboiled uniform, that even when emerging anew, you’re still the same caged bird, isolated from those around you. Realizing that no matter how far he shakes the gangsters that want him dead, or the officer that wants him detained, Jef will always lead a solitary life of crime, living through a moralistic code that has become engrained in his very essence. As Jef approaches the stage of the same nightclub he made his ill-fated hit, his calculated blue-steel inspection turned to exhausted acceptance, we waver between the point of view of our hitman and his target, the jazz pianist turned accomplice Caty Rosier. It’s Melville’s use of perspective that sheds light on who Jef is and what he has been driven to. Jef’s hard, confirmative expression bounces off Caty’s soft, assured look of denial the same way a bird hits a window; with a stunned belief of what’s standing between him and freedom. Pulling an unloaded gun on a target he’s told to kill is Jef denying the code of the samurai, committing a type of seppuku. It’s a sacrifice that flings open the door to a caged and isolated existence, one that flutters between the acceptance of the samurai code, and the unbearable desire to be free from a life estranged from the accepting hand of a woman.

The Day the Earth Stood Still: Sensationalizing and Distorting Fear To take a line from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, “we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.” Except this time, Dorothy’s a newly transplanted alien named Klaatu, Toto an 8-foot-tall steel gargantuan named Gort, and Kansas a post-WWII America. Even though over 60 years have passed since Robert Wise’s monumentally impacting sci-fi classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ was released, the parallels between then and now are still interchangeable. Political fears shape the foundation of social ideals, suspicions of foreign outsiders eat away at our core values, and the use of media still incites false representation of facts and world views. After WWII and the defeat of Nazi-occupied Germany, the lens of war was shifted, with many of the atrocities and destruction being misrepresented to your average citizen. Through this screen, fear and suspicion were established, instilling in Americans mistrust for others, specifically those from foreign soil. When an alien spacecraft touches down in Washington DC, panic washes over the nation as fear of another world war and a home invasion spreads like wild fire. Emerging from the craft is Klaatu, a humanoid declaring his arrival a peaceful one with good intentions. Regardless, a soldier fires upon Klaatu, injuring him and prompting Gort to disintegrate the weapons and tanks that have gathered around the area. Soon after managing to escape, Klaatu finds himself at a roadside inn, where with the help of Helen Benson and her son Bobby, he begins to understand the methods of this world. After World War II, much of the world was uneasy, a growing sense of suspicion arising from an instilled fear of pain and suffering. When Allied soldiers liberated the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, images of what went on came back in pieces, fractured through the biased lens of television and radio. This increasingly popular box became a gateway for information, sought after by millions of Americans who believed what they heard as the ultimate declaration of life, liberty and truth. As reports of Klaatu’s arrival begin filtering through the media, we are taken inside a television set that rests in front of a broadcaster, instructing the people that there is no immediate cause for alarm. However, we are transported into a lens that shows panic, hysteria, force, and fear, as what we don’t comprehend arrives not on Earth’s soil, but America’s Earth. This entitled pride and skewed patriotism encouraged by the media cause the people of Earth to be unable to appease Klaatu’s urgent message of unity and strength. And how could one expect such things from a people who utilized atomic energy, not for travel as Klaatu has through his space craft, but for destructive power? When we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of human lives were taken, as “a rain of ruin from the air” was cast down on Japan– a message from Harry Truman that came with a heavy warning similar to the one directed at Earth by Klaatu. It was this immense and swift act of terror that won the war and subsequently destroyed the hope of a united and trusted nation of one. With Klaatu having escaped the confines of his guarded hospital room and experiencing life in the world he’s come to warn, we are given a sense of the information as it is skewed and directed towards the people. Newspaper headlines reading “Man from Mars Escapes” fill the racks while radio broadcasts filled the airwaves in an attempt to correct the worry that this galactic being has tentacles. This misinformation and misguided caution arises from the very ashes of the atom bomb’s infinite power, the translation of its destruction being celebratory joy and victory. Reporting’s of those three days, August 3 to August 6, came back in the form of falsified accounts, with many American citizens being force fed little-to-no statistics on what really happened. Similarly, the arrival of Klaatu’s craft, powered by atomic energy, represents a sort of bomb being leveled on American soil, as its peaceful landing and objective creates a terror that had yet to be seen. Working off post-WWII suspicion, the calm of such an unannounced arrival is shifted into a cumulative unease that winds up creating a shift in American sensibilities–harmony turning to violence, order into chaos and understanding into irrationality. It isn’t until Bobby, a young boy unaware of the world’s political unease and mistrusts, befriends Klaatu, now disguised as a Mr. Carpenter that the humanoid is able to see, first hand, what the wonders of life on Earth can be. Wearing a Yankees cap and filling his days with schoolwork, movies and train sets, Bobby demonstrates what it means to view the world, not through the lens of media and fear, but through a simplified understanding that we are all the same. Perhaps Klaatu’s arrival is only alien through media representation, altering how we think and feel, like the differing views of the war seen from the safety of home. Maybe he’s a symbol of unity and hope that has only been casted out based off our own fear. If we valued and viewed things right in front of us and not by what’s reported, would our idea of humanity expand passed a sea of ill feelings? While it might take the chaos of a tornado to send Dorothy from the safety of Kansas to Oz, it doesn’t require a whirlwind of fear to bring us back to reality; a place where values and kindness are reportedly no different than that of another planet.

Get Out (2017) At first glance, one could easily make the snap judgement that Jordan Peele isn’t a horror director. Widely known for his comedic presence alongside Keegan Michael Key on the popular Comedy Central show ‘Key and Peele’, Peele mainly riffs off his co-host (which they both do in equal measures) on topical issues ranging from cultural name pronunciation to soul food, all the way to slave auctioning. What all of these sketches have in common is the severity of their underlying issues re: race, the fact that Peele himself is responsible for scribing many of them, and that racism is outright terrifying. ‘Get Out’ is a film that doesn’t shy away from being overtly transparent in its subject matter, being as obtuse in its racism as the many videos of police brutality against blacks. Many might chastise a film, especially within the horror genre, for lacking subtlety and ambiguity, but this is the kind of story we need, and now. Centering on a couple, Chris and Rose (Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams, respectively), who are heading away for the weekend to meet her parents, played by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener, ‘Get Out’ takes very little time in touching up on interracial dynamics. Rose didn’t tell her parents that Chris is black, feeling as if it isn’t a cause for awareness, where Chris finds that approach naïve, a feeling his TSA friend Rob (LilRel Howery) shares with a comedic approach. Once introduced to Rose’s affluent parents, her father a neurosurgeon while the mother a psychiatrist, things begin to quickly unfold in a true Hitchcockian fashion. It’s here where Chris is confronted with white suburban racism in the form of stereotypes, discrimination, and class barriers. Similarly to his show, Peele hits on the everyday plethora of racism, but within a storytelling structure that never lets go, like the hypnosis Rose’s mother uses to cure patients of addiction. If you happen to find the inability to grasp at anything pertinent within the social constructs of this reality, one that never strays too far from ours, then there’s a central issue in you that resonates from the very essence of ‘Get Out’, a film that values story in as much as it does context. Being a white male operating with luxury in a world where being a person of color can get you shot with absolutely zero justification, it doesn’t take an elephant in the room to point out how we as participants should be absorbing the blatant symbolism placed in front of us. Tucked away, divided by a lake that separates them from their equally wealthy neighbors, Rose’s parents live hidden behind a brick façade that might as well be draped in a pointy white sheet. They justify their established position by stating their proclivity for a 3rd Obama term, and their fascination with being able to experience other people’s cultures through artifacts, statements that are as transparent and crippling as the fact that the help is all black. It’s this undisguised nature that resides within ‘Get Out’, carrying Chris further into a whiteout, only blinding him momentarily when his calculating and unrealistic girlfriend attempts to reassure him. Tensions between our two parties begin to escalate over popped corks and cheese boards, all in a fashion that eclipses any notion of fiction. Peele unravels the very thread in which racial tension rests on, uncovering a tattered fabric eaten away by the unending climate of civil friction woven into our nation. Despite polite smiles and brisk responses to an unending wave of black stereotyping, we are ceremoniously given entry into the mindset of a maligned and discriminated individual; one who gives ‘Get Out’ the cogs and steam necessary to become more than just another horror cliché. While there’s nothing supernatural about the terror unfolding in front of us, aside from a few plot devices, by the time we’re freed from Peele’s tight grasp we’ll eagerly want to get back into what is the tensest and most relevantly necessary film to be placed on celluloid in recent years.

Star Wars: Rogue One (2016) If you’re a Star Wars fan, then for the most part, you’ll love ‘Rogue One’. Probably. There are new and exotic worlds, a plethora of unknown faces with names that are difficult to pronounce, let alone remember, and it all fits seamlessly into a universe we have come to recognize as household. Seeing all of this on the big screen can be awe-inspiring, the fan within feeling nostalgic over sights and sounds that light up our senses like a lightsaber. While these feelings for something alternatingly new and old may lead you to believe Rogue One is a well-oiled machine, it isn’t without its loose parts. Before the title card even stretches across the screen, we are introduced to multiple characters that are both of Rebel and Galactic affiliation. Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), an ex-engineer turned farmer who is pulled back into his former job with the Empire by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), an underling in the operation of the Death Star. A Galactic fighter turned traitor in search of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), the radical freedom fighter and man who rescued Galen’s daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones) from a life of Empirical evil. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the Rebel Alliance spy in search of the Death Star plans. A blind recluse who is the only connection between the Force, with the Jedi remaining behind closed doors for the first time in a Star Wars film. If this seems like a lot to digest, it’s because it is. We are drastically thrown into the midst of the battle between good and evil right from the very beginning, as ‘Rogue One’ drops us off 19 years after the tumultuous events of Episode III. It may seem like a large enough gap within the films story, but in our time it feels like a couple of months (there is no Luke Skywalker to tell us otherwise). It’s jarring to begin understanding s fresh set of characters that run on their own timeline, but after the first hour or so, it becomes ultimately refreshing. Gone are the similarities that got so many riled up with ‘The Force Awakens’, instead offering up its own unique blend of humans, cyborgs, and aliens. As things begin picking up pace after a necessarily drawn out and operatically dramatic opener with Ben Mendelsohn and Mads Mikkelsen (it’s no Deniro and Pacino, but it’s close), we can’t help but get swept up in what makes the Star Wars Universe so gripping. This is a film that knows when to slow down and when to hit warp speed. Consider ‘Rogue One’ the ‘Fellowship of the Rings’ of the series, as its exposition leads our rag-tag team on foot over being tucked away in a ship. It’s what allows us to become familiar with each character who we know will never truly surpass our fondness for the Leia and Han’s, and who have a much shorter shelf life. Director Gareth Edwards, previously taking on the lost world introduced by Steven Spielberg, flexes his muscle for franchise blockbusters, replacing the man-made Indominus Rex with the man-made Death Star. Edwards has a particular knack for pacing, placing us in a hailstorm of poorly fired Stormtrooper lasers once our dialogue driven story has temporarily worn out its welcome. It’s a welcome that is worn out fairly too often, as the script, while cutting to the point, feels watered down for the young Jedi’s of the families. It’s not so much an issue as it is a preamble to the marginally better dialogue that Lucas laid out with ‘New Hope’. However, we aren’t here for the nuanced banter and witty one-liners, as quotable as the previous entries have become. No, for the most part we’re here for the nostalgia of a universe crafted for fans and the action that destroys it, in as much heart as ‘Rogue One’ carries (and it does tug on your heartstrings). If you’ve ever played the Star Wars Battlefront games, you can expect the same sprawled out epicness of a 65 plus man game, though our focus on our Rebel led mission is never lost. Despite an abundant amount of panned shots featuring a new planet to become lost in, Edwards’s camera and explosive set pieces tend to lead our eyes just where they need to be. It’s enough of a film where we don’t feel like we need to be holding a controller, despite another entry that forgets the power of prop magic. Given our current state of affairs, the White Houses attempted travel ban a very real and terrifying thing, maybe the jolt and disorientation of something new, different yet comforting in its aesthetic is just what we need. Coexisting in our universe, where the powers that be attempt to tell us who is a threat and what names are synonymous with terror, perhaps a film with plenty of faces that aren’t familiar and names that sound unheard of is exactly what we need. For all its faults, ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ feels like a film that stands tall in the face of both fictitious and real tyrannical terror.

The Red Turtle (2016) What does it mean to drown? The obvious answer is to succumb to death, to be overtaken by a form of liquid in the lungs. I believe it also means fighting to survive, living until your muscles give way to exhaustion and you can’t fight anymore. I imagine this is how it also must feel to be stranded on an island, marooned with only a sliver of hope, embraced for as long as humanely possible. When we are first introduced to our soon-to-be-stranded survivor (he exists without any name given), he is battling the waves of a raging storm, the fear of drowning near, or perhaps it isn’t the fear of death but that of what’s to come; being marooned on a deserted island. After waking up and scourging the island for life, our survivor begins constructing a raft. It isn’t clear what he was before his new life, but none of that really matters-what matters are the differences. That’s where life on the island and ‘The Red Turtle’ begin running parallel to each other, as both, over time, start to show exquisite beauty in nature. The film, like our survivors new life, harbors a patient grace that can at times be trying; there’s little to no dialogue save for some screams of despair, one continual score by composer Laurent Perez del Mar and a canvas that isn’t, well, ‘Zootopia’ in its colors and movement. If you can get past these notably unique and necessary traits, then there is a richly painted and unforgettable world filled with more charm and humanity than most of the Best Picture nominations combined. There’s a scene early on that has our survivor trapped between rocky crevices submerged in water that features one of the most intense and terrifying moments in any film this year, showcasing the range of its emotions and the power of animation. As our survivor experiences life on the island, we can’t help but get caught up and lost in the delicate tapestry of life’s intrinsic beauty, many of Studio Ghibli’s characteristics speaking volumes without the need to say anything. Strength, resilience, courage, fear and sorrow bury themselves deep in the sand of the island and our heart, as one of the most endearingly true and genuinely told relationships opens up right before our very eyes. What we come to realize is how connected nature is with our survivor, how entwined we can become in the essence of animation, and how survival can be so much more than fighting to breathe.