Here, in no particular order, are all the movies and TV shows I saw in April. A few duds, a few gems, and a lot to talk about.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
From the blood-curdling scream to Elisha Cook Jr.’s floating, furrowed brow, House on Haunted Hill is, if nothing else, honest about its tone from the first few seconds. This is camp at its finest, and if it’s too rich for your cultural arteries, you’ll know immediately. That said, watching it purely for Vincent Price’s impeccable line delivery is worth every second. Never has anyone said “She’s so amusing” with so much bloodlust. Remember, kids: don’t go down to the basement with the vat of acid.
Stonehouse (2023) (series)
Anyone who’s seen Matthew Macfadyen in both Succession and Pride and Prejudice knows that the man has range. Sadly, Stonehouse, a miniseries based on the real-life faked suicide of an up-and-coming member of parliament in the 1970s, is not worthy of his talents. It’s broad, tonally confused, and written with zero insight into the human condition. John Stonehouse has roughly three children (a precise count would require them to be easily differentiated), at least two of whom appear to be teenagers, and they talk to him as if they admire and respect him. They smile, genuinely, when he enters a room. They are polite to him. They rarely speak. When he turns up no longer dead after several months, they grin and hug him as if it’s just nice to see him. Seriously? I think not. Don’t bother with this drivel. It’s a fascinating true story that has been made crushingly dull and, somehow, lacking in anything approximating real life.
Civil War (2024)
Alex Garland’s Civil War has emerged as the latest national bone of contention. Set in a near-future America that is identical to the present aside from the fact that the country is at civil war, it makes a point of ignoring ideology. There is a president who announces that he’s won a third term, and Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson play journalists trying to get from New York to D.C. to interview him before the rebels take the capital. There is no controversy over Garland’s skill as a filmmaker. The movie is tense from start to finish, with the right amount of jump-scares and characters to care about. The debate has been over the ethics of depicting a civil war without explaining the ideologies involved. Both sides are portrayed as identically barbaric, a comment, one would assume, on how war turns us all into monsters. But is it irresponsible to depict the United States at war without commenting on who is responsible, especially in 2024 when the country’s relationship to democracy hasn’t been so tenuous since the last civil war? The only takeaway from this movie seems to be that war is always bad (that checks out) and war correspondents are kind of fucked up (seems plausible).
I don’t have issues with movies that refuse to take a stance on the morality of their characters (Oppenheimer was one of my favorite movies last year), and I didn’t feel particularly annoyed that there was seemingly no good side in the civil war. What bothered me is what has bothered me about two of Garland’s other three movies (Annihilation and Men): they simply go too far. The brutality in this movie is staggering. There is one scene with Jesse Plemons and a mass grave that you simply can’t unsee, and when the movie has nothing more original to say than “war is bad,” the soul-killing savagery just isn’t earned. Similarly, Men is a movie whose message is something along the lines of “misogyny is bad,” an embarrassingly basic observation that, again, does not earn the excesses of the film. Civil War is exciting, unsettling, and a long-overdue vehicle for Kirsten Dunst, but its message doesn’t justify its brutality, and on balance, it probably isn’t worth watching unless your tolerance for violence and cruelty is extremely high.
Pain Hustlers (2023)
Having just read Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, Pain Hustlers reminded me of the little folder of pictures and charts that staffers were forced to produce for Trump in lieu of actual intelligence briefings. If you kind of want to know about the evil masterminds behind the opioid epidemic but actually just want to see pretty people acting stuff out, go ahead and put your Netflix subscription to good use. If you want to get a grasp on the what, why, how, and who of it all, read Keefe’s book. I do not say this happily. Emily Blunt is one of our most treasured movie stars and Chris Evans is one of the top three Hollywood Chrises, but there’s a reason you haven’t heard of this movie despite its star power: it’s neither deep nor scandalous nor sexy nor shambolic enough to warrant a discussion.
Sorcerer (1977)
No one should pity William Friedkin. The New Hollywood mogul helmed two of the most lauded movies in cinema history (The French Connection and The Exorcist) and has a rock-solid legacy. But when you see his 1977 nail-biter Sorcerer, it’s hard not to feel a pang of regret that it still hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves. Based on the French novel The Wages of Fear, it follows four men who, for differing reasons of criminality, are in exile in a rural Colombian village. Hoping for a shot at freedom, they accept a job transporting highly unstable dynamite 200 miles through the jungle.
Like The French Connection, Sorcerer is a masterclass in suspense. There is a scene on a rickety bridge in the middle of the night during a torrential rainstorm that will have you gripping your sofa cushions so tightly you’ll be sore the next day. They do not make movies like this anymore, largely because it’s now illegal to put a cast and crew (and budget) through such treacherous and unpredictable conditions. Like Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcorraldo, and Apocalypse Now, this movie is part documentary, and the terror of the elements has never been quite so humbling or immediate on-screen. Friedkin considered this his best film, and it’s hard to disagree.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Nowhere is the magic of cinema more apparent than when you’re watching a bad movie at the theater and find it utterly engrossing. The latest Ghostbusters reboot is a kid’s movie, apparently, and that’s fine, but it also happens to be quite boring and hard to follow, an irritating combination that would be unbearable if it wasn’t the only option at the local movie theater. There’s a family and they’re fighting ghosts in New York. Carrie Coon is given an offensively nonexistent character who does nothing but stare at her phone and scold her kids for being good at ghost-catching. Kumail Nanjiani shows up as the only bright spot, toting a metallic orb that houses an ancient ghost made of ice and nails(?) There’s a hint of a queer love story between the lead human teenager and a puffy-lipped ghost, but who are we kidding? Everyone’s just waiting for Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts to throw down some vintage quips. They do, eventually, but they’re drowned out by the ancient frozen orb thing and the chaos that ensues is not worth suspending your disbelief over.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
When you see Anatomy of a Fall, it’s hard not to feel embarrassed on behalf of the Academy for not giving Sandra Hüller the Oscar. She plays Sandra, a famous writer in Grenoble suspected of pushing her husband to his death while their blind son is out walking the dog. It is both a character study of a complex woman and the most tense courtroom drama released in years. I found myself thinking of Todd Fields’ Tár while watching it, a film that centers on a similarly confounding female protagonist. Where Tár was seduced by its own provocation, however, Anatomy of a Fall (co-written and directed by Justine Triet who is possessed by an infuriating excess of talent and skill) is propulsive, ambiguous, and intricate. Sandra is everything that Lydia Tár should have been – steely, self-serving, talented, tender, and impossibly real. Hüller’s intelligence is like a pulse that reverberates throughout the film – around the courtroom, in close-ups, and into every line. She is one of the few actors who never seems to be acting.
The Gentlemen (2024) (series)
Someone needs to confiscate Guy Ritchie’s thesaurus. And, preferably, his budget.
Bottoms (2023)
Following the world’s most suspenseful (and hilarious) depiction of a post-funeral gathering in Shiva Baby, writer/director Emma Seligman reteamed with comedian Rachel Sennott to make the high school movie that you didn’t know you needed. Sennott and The Bear star Ayo Edibiri play two “ugly, untalented gays” who start a girls’-only fight club in the hope that it will lead to sex. Mostly, it just leads to gore. Lots of it. Throw in a primadonna quarterback and Marshawn Lynch playing a history teacher and you’ve got the makings of a bloody, bizarre, hilarious, and, frankly, filthy new entry into the high school movie canon. You will either be offended by it or adore it. I was very much in the latter category.
Baby Reindeer (2024) (series)
Phrases along the lines of, “This is not like anything you’ve ever seen” have been tossed around a lot in reference to Netflix’s sleeper hit, Baby Reindeer. Created, starring, and based on the real-life experiences of British comedian Richard Gadd, it centers on a struggling performer in London being stalked by a middle-aged woman. It sounds like a simple gender-swap of a familiar storyline, but it is much more complex and surprising. It’s part black comedy, part horror, but mostly, it’s a dark, cleverly-paced drama about abuse and trauma. The fourth episode in this seven-part series, a flashback that sheds light onto why Donny, the main character, seems reluctant to report his stalker to the police, comes out of nowhere and is one of the most chilling episodes of television you’ll see anytime soon. If that sounds unappealing, I’d encourage anyone to try watching it anyway. In addition to its darkness, it’s also laugh-out-loud in places, empathetic, suspenseful, and will, without question, make you cry by the end.
Dream Scenario (2023)
There has always been something perverse about Nicolas Cage’s acting. Early in his career, he expressed a desire to act like Picasso paints, and he’s pretty much lived up to it. In dozens of trashy genre mashups and a handful of unexpected gems, he’s managed to portray groovy tornadoes of evil, weirdos pushed to the brink of ecstatic madness, and doofuses who might kill you for no reason. His movie choices are eclectic. His fans are rabid. And every once in a while, everything aligns. In this movie, it does. A surreal scenario for a surreal actor leads to a surprisingly harmonious, even restrained result. (You can read the rest of my review here).