“She Dies Tomorrow,” a surreal new horror film on VOD, is a timely and unsettling story where the fear of death is passed from person to person like a virus.
The story begins with Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), once a joyful young woman looking forward to setting up her newly purchased home. But now it’s a job that comes with no joy as Amy is gripped with deep, soul-shredding anxiety. For some reason she is convinced she will die the next day. Not by suicide or illness, just death. “There is no tomorrow for me,” she says. She’s so convinced of her inevitable fate she changes her voicemail message. “There’s no need to leave a message.”
Seeking a connection, she invites her friend Jane (Jane Adams) over. Jane swings by and after some awkward conversation about death leaves, also consumed by thoughts of her own, impending passing. As Jane moves through the night, visiting a doctor (Josh Lucas), her brother (Chris Messina) and friends (Olivia Taylor Dudley and Michelle Rodriguez) she leaves an existential trail of fear with everyone she meets.
Directed by Amy Seimetz “She Dies Tomorrow” is not a regular horror film. It’s an experiment in atmosphere building aided by a premise that feels very timely in the midst of a pandemic.
Questions are asked—What is this virus and how is it transported?—but no answers are provided. The film requires you to accept the situation and feel the anxiety of something that may or may not be real. For Seimetz’s characters the dread is palpable, forcing them to examine their choices, in relationships and life, and re-evaluate in whatever time they have left. In this time of real-life uncertainty Seimetz paints a vivid picture of mortality on a countdown that, while speculative, feels rooted in recent headlines.
Fittingly “She Dies Tomorrow” has a hallucinogenic, experimental style. Throbbing, flashing swaths of colour fill the screen as the virus—or whatever it is—attaches itself to a new host. It’s trippy, slightly psychedelic and may test the patience of less adventurous viewers but in a time where COVID-19 has spread worldwide, bringing with it angst and unease, a movie that examines human behavior in the face of transmittable trauma is, perhaps, a nightmarish artistic inevitability.
As “Joker” sweeps through Awards Season, scooping up a motherlode of Best Actor gold for Joaquin Phoenix, along comes the standalone story of the Clown Prince of Crime’s former female sidekick. “Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)” sees Margot Robbie revisit her unpredictable “Suicide Squad” character in an R-rated film that is part action, part comedy and all attitude. More in tune with the antics of “Deadpool” than the serious tone of “Joker,” “Birds of Prey” is a fourth-wall-breaking story that doesn’t feel like other superhero movies.
Picking up after the events of “Suicide Squad,” Gotham City has become a cesspool of crime. Batman has flown the coop leaving the city unprotected from the likes of crime lord Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). The baseball wielding Quinn has rid herself of her former “partner in madness,” the Joker—” I am so over clowns!” she says—and now travels with a new squad of vigilantes. “As it turns out, I wasn’t the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation,” she says. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) come together to help Harley protect Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a young pickpocket who had the bad luck of coming into possession of a diamond ebcoded with a valuable secret, a secret Black Mask desperately wants. “I’m back on my feet,” Harley says, “ready to embrace the fierce goddess within.”
“Birds of Prey” is a story of survivors, of feminism, of tough women out on the town and it is the most fun DC has offered up at the movies. The stripped-down story sheds “Suicide Squad’s” nihilistic nonsense in favor of empowerment and general kick assery.
It gets off to a slow start, establishing the characters and situation, but erupts in the last third with bombastic action choreographed by director Cathy Yan and “John Wick” fight maestro Chad Stahelski. Forget the CGI finales of the Marvel Universe, this is blood-soaked up-close-and-personal stunt action with a wicked sense of humour.
Robbie has a gleeful, cheeky commitment to the character that sets the tone for the movie’s 80s new wave kaleidoscopic aesthetic. With a habit of settling disputes with a baseball bat to the groin she isn’t a role model but is unpredictable, scrappy fun to watch on screen. Ditto McGregor who actually seems to be having fun wearing Black Mask’s hyped-up wardrobe after a series of movies that have left his charisma relegated to the backroom.
“Birds of Prey” is loads of fun but manages to weave some serious ideas about not needing men to survive into the chaos. Most of all, though, it feels like a welcome antidote to the monotony of so many comic book inspired films.
“Live By Night’s” stylish story of gangsters and redemption sees Ben Affleck reteam with crime writer Dennis Lehane. Their last collaboration, “Gone Baby Gone,” was a story of two detectives embroiled in a professional and personal crisis. This time around the personal and professional intermingle once again, but from the other side of the badge.
Affleck, who stars, directs and wrote the screenplay, is Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain (Brendan Gleeson) who returned from WWI an outlaw, determined not to take orders from anyone ever again. “No man shall rule another man’s life,” he says. A botched bank robbery lands him in jail, at a reduced sentence thanks to his father’s influence. Jail is a breeze, worse for him is his romantic involvement with flapper Emma Gould (Sienna Miller) who also happens to be the girlfriend of powerful Boston gangster Albert White (Robert Glenister).
Sprung from the lockup and beaten to a pulp by White’s men, Coughlin teams with Boston’s other gang boss, Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). He’s sent to Ybor City, Florida with the task of taking over the lucrative prohibition bootleg booze business, currently run by White. To that end he leaves a trail of blood and bodies but when this demon rum purveyor tries to find a legitimate way to make cash by building a casino, a religious zealot (Elle Fanning) puts a crimp in his less-than-godly pursuits and interests.
“Live by Night” is a muted, sombre film punctuated by Baptists, bullets, broads and booze. Affleck creates a hard-boiled look at gangster life complete with corruption, betrayal and all the usual crime genre tropes but opens it up to include passion, family and redemption.
Coughlin is an interesting character, a man who coveted his amateur crook status and only turns pro—in other words, becomes a gangster—when he is painted into a corner. He’ll gun you down, but he’s no Scarface. Instead Affleck plays him as a stoic man who leads with his heart and only resorts to violence when all other options are exhausted. Later, when his legacy of violence comes back to haunt him, it packs a wallop.
There’s a lot going on in Ybor City. “Live By Night” tackles racism—the KKK plays a big role in the Florida section of the story—religion—thanks to Fanning’s troubled but angelic character—love—in the form of Graciella Corrales (Zoe Saldana)—loyalty and betrayal. It’s a literary stew of themes, held together by the violence and pulpier aspects of the movie.
Career gearshifts are tough. For every McConaissance there is a Gerard Butler or Katherine Heigl who can’t seem to make the change from rom coms to more serous roles.
For a while it looked like Jennifer Aniston was stuck in the same rut. Forgettable movies like “Love Happens” and “The Bounty Hunter” seemed to pigeonhole her as an American Sweetheart type in a movie market filled to bursting with dramatic darlings.
Lately though she’s been doing some career busting, appearing in raunchy comedies like “Horrible Bosses” and “We Are the Millers” and now “Cake,” a low budget drama about putting the broken pieces of a shattered life back together that should put Rachel on the shelf forever in favor of the more daring work she used to do in movies like “The Good Girl” and “Friends with Money.”
She plays Claire, a churlish woman suffering with chronic pain brought on by a car accident that crushed her leg and took the life of her son. The near death experience blew apart her marriage to Jason (Chris Messina), leaving her alone with her tough-but-tender housekeeper Silvana (Adriana Barazza) and the members of her support group. When Nina (Anna Kendrick), a member of the group, commits suicide Claire becomes obsessed with Nina’s life and death. Her search for answers leads her to Nina’s husband’s (Sam Worthington) door and to a new way at looking at life.
“Cake” has many nicely played dramatic scenes. Putting Aniston’s crusty Claire next to Barazza’s warmhearted Silvana is inspired. Their scenes are by far and away the best things in the movie. When they aren’t sparking off one another the movie loses much of its sizzle.
Not that Worthington fails, he doesn’t, but as part of the Nina/Claire-redemption story arc he’s the engine that drives the most predictable and least interesting part of the story.
Aniston, however, is terrific. The pain that wracks her body and tortures her psyche is evident in every movement, in every word that tumbles from her lips. That doesn’t mean she can’t still deliver a funny line. Ten seasons of sit com work honed that skill to a fine edge so when she asks if Nina’s husband where he got the granite for her gravestone because, “I’m thinking of putting a kitchen rail in my backyard,” it’s prickly but hilarious.
“Cake” is a great showcase for the new, dramatic Aniston but it isn’t a great film. In it’s final moments the movie grasps for a feel good ending which is just slightly out of reach.
