Review: 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' is a monster story with classic references and old-school suspense

Old-school tension replaces the gore in “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” an entertaining-enough take on one of literature’s most famous monsters.

The opening title cards set the time: 1897, with a sailing ship — the Russian schooner Demeter — crashing on the shores of England on dark and stormy night. No one is alive on board, but one scared young constable brings out the captain’s log, which describes a harrowing encounter with the monster, and the warning “if it finds you, God help you.”

The title cards also let us know the monster’s identity, noting that the Demeter’s log is from a chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula.”

The script — by Bragi F. Schut (“Escape Room”) and Zak Olkewicz (“Bullet Train”) — jumps back four weeks, when the Demeter is getting set to leave port in the Mediterranean, bound for London. Capt. Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), hire some new crew members. The one we’re most interested in is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), who trained as a doctor at Cambridge, but has been unable to find work in a hospital because he’s Black. Clemens only gets hired because another new crew member sees the crates being loaded onto the ship and quits, saying the dragon emblem on them is a bad omen.

So with a crew of nine — 10, if we include Capt. Eliot’s 9-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman) — the Demeter sets off on its voyage. But something doesn’t feel right on board, and the feeling is confirmed when the the ship’s dog and the livestock in the cargo hold suddenly die. Wojchek and the ship’s evangelical cook, Joseph (Jon Jon Briones), think there’s a curse. Clemens, a man of science and reason, looks for another explanation.

In the cargo hold, he finds one of the mysterious crates has opened, and amid the dirt there’s a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi, from “The Nightingale”). Once nursed back to health, thanks to Clemens giving transfusions of his blood, Anna tells the crew that something evil from her home country has boarded the Demeter. And after the crew gets winnowed down to the monster, even Clemens comes to believe it.

Director André Øvredal knows how to deliver jump-scare horror — his previous films “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” are evidence of this. Here, though, he throttles back on the in-your-face horror, opting instead to build up tension and let it snap in measured doses. 

The movie also takes a page from the old Hammer studio horror films, which relied more on character and acting than shock value. Hawkins (from “In the Heights” and “Straight Outta Compton”) is strong in the central role, though he’s often outpaced by Franciosi’s haunted Anna, Cunningham’s soulful captain, and the working-class brusqueness of Dastmalchian — who, with his roles here and in “Oppenheimer,” “The Boogeyman” and “Boston Strangler,” is having quite a year.

Still, one can imagine how much tension might have been had if the audience didn’t know the monster’s identity from the get-go, if landmarks like “Carfax Abbey” had been placed for us to discover. It would have made “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” a more memorable ride.

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‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'Afire' is a comedy-drama with a tone palette all its own — and another stellar performance from Paula Beer

German director Christian Petzold shows with his new film, “Afire,” that he’s not going to go where you think — though those of us who saw his wartime refugee drama “Transit” or his mermaid tale “Undine” already knew that.

Leon (Thomas Schubert) and his friend, Felix (Langston Uibel), are driving to a cabin near the Baltic Sea for a few days of isolation. Leon is a novelist, trying to put the last touches on his second book before showing it to his publisher, Helmut (Matthias Brandt), who’s expected to visit in a few days. Felix is trying to get into art school, and is supposed to be working on his photography portfolio for his application.

Felix is less interested in working and more interested in hanging out, and going down to the beach — though the beach does inspire his creative juices. Leon, trying to do some writing at the cabin, finds himself creatively blocked, in part because he has a sinking feeling his book isn’t very good.

There’s also the matter of Nadja, played by the extraordinary German actress Paula Beer, who worked with Petzold in both “Transit” and “Undine.” Nadja was staying in the cabin before the guys arrived (the owner, Felix’s mom, forgot that she double-booked), and so Leon is annoyed that he has to share a room with Felix, and is kept awake by Nadja’s boisterous lovemaking with Devid (Enno Trebs), a lifeguard — excuse me, “rescue swimmer” — who works on the beach.

When Devid joins the three for dinner one evening, Leon gets snippy, eye-rolling at the idea of being a professional “rescue swimmer.” Nadja, later, calls him out on his snobbery, leading Leon to apologize for his rudeness and stupidity. This becomes a pattern in their interactions, and Nadja puts up with in in part because she recognizes that Leon is using his boorishness to hide his fears about showing the book to Helmut.

While all this is happening, occasionally they talk about the forest fires that are some 30 kilometers away from the cabin — and whether they might get closer.

Petzold, as writer and director, shows a mastery of tone here, but he keeps the audience off guard by not striking the tone one would expect. Leon’s bad behavior, and his banter with Nadja, has the structure of a comedy, but Petzold plays it so low-key that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a drama. The way you know it’s not a drama is that, at a certain point, real drama enters the room and hits your heart like a freight train.

The ensemble cast is solid, but Beer — the only woman among the main actors — is naturally a standout. A lesser actress, working with a less assured director, would turn Nadja into a “manic pixie dream girl” character, too offbeat and too perfect to be believable. Nadja has some of those qualities, but Beer makes them feel like part of a complicated, very human character. Beer’s charisma is like a wildfire, bright and hot, but she definitely knows how to control it. 

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‘Afire’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 11, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for sexual content and some intense fire images. Running time: 103 minutes; in German, with subtitles.

Review: 'Jules' puts some good actors in service to a slight but sometimes funny story of an alien landing

A whimsical and slight comedy, “Jules” definitely benefits from a trio of veteran players — led by the always intriguing work of Sir Ben Kingsley.

Kingsley plays Milton Robinson, living a solitary life in a western Pennsylvania town, where his main activity is going to the city council meeting and repeating the same complaints during the public comment period. His wife died a bit ago. His daughter, Denise (Zoe Winters), checks up on him so he takes his meds and so on, but is often exasperated by his stubbornness. His son long ago moved to California, and they have little contact.

One night, Milton is awakened by a clatter in his backyard. He goes out and discovers a flying saucer has crashed into his garden, crushing his azaleas. Out of the ship emerges a small, gray, naked, hairless and genital-free humanoid (played by actor and stuntwoman Jade Quon), who needs help. Milton quickly figures out that the creature likes apples, so he buys a lot of them.

He mentions his new alien friend at the next council meeting, but no one believes him. Another frequent commenter, Joyce (Jane Curtin), even complains to Milton that such talk makes the other commenters look crazy. 

Yet another commenter, Sandy (Harried Sansom Harris), stops by Milton’s house, and meets the alien — and, after a momentary shock, befriends the creature and gives them the name Jules. Joyce starts spying on Milton’s house, and within a short time is part of the tiny conspiracy to help Jules get their spaceship working again. This, they ultimately figure out, involves cats.

Meanwhile, a secret government agency has detected strange energy waves from somewhere in western Pennsylvania, and is starting to close in on Milton.

Director Marc Turtletaub (who made the 2018 drama “Puzzle,” a minor hit at Sundance) and first-time movie screenwriter Gavin Steckler keep the humor in a calm, quiet register, with one off-putting exception that shows us the range of Jules’ powers. The laughs are mild chuckles, never hearty guffaws.

Kingsley deftly modulates his performance to fit the movie’s low-stress vibe. The standout comic performance is — and this is no surprise to anybody who remembers her “Saturday Night Live” days — is Curtin, who finds the rebel hidden under Joyce’s busybody persona. Her unexpected rendition of “Free Bird” is the movie’s biggest laugh, in a movie that could use more of them.

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‘Jules’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for strong language. Running time: 87 minutes.

Review: 'Shortcomings' is a funny, smart take on Asian identity, and a sharp directing debut for actor Randall Park

On the blurry line between defending one’s ethnic identity and finding one’s own self lies “Shortcomings,” a funny and thoughtful anti-romantic comedy that’s a strong directing debut for actor Randall Park.

Ben, played by Justin H. Min, runs a failing independent movie theater in Berkeley, Calif., and once harbored dreams of being a filmmaker. As a Japanese American movie snob, he’s particularly incensed about Hollywood movies with mostly Asian casts pandering to the worst impulses of rom-com sentimentality. (The movie opens with such a scene, featuring Stephanie Hsu and Ronny Chieng, that’s a diss clearly aimed at “Crazy Rich Asians.”) 

Ben’s girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki), works with the Asian American film festival that booked that Hollywood product, so the drive home devolves into the latest in a series of arguments the couple has had recently. Another argument starts when Miko finds porn websites on Ben’s laptop, all of them featuring white women — which, Miko argues, shows Ben’s a hypocrite because he always says his preferences are toward Asian women.

Ben’s olher conversation partner is Alice (played by comedian Sherry Cola), a tart-tongued lesbian college student who can’t seem to go two days without falling in love with some attractive woman — such as the waitress at their favorite diner. Alice is also the only person who can successfully call Ben out on his bullcrap, particularly when he talks about Miko. 

Miko soon tells Ben she’s been picked for a three-month internship — which, she says curtly, is a good time to press pause on their relationship. While Miko’s gone, Ben plunges back into the dating scene, first with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), a performance artist he hired to staff the theater’s box office, and Sasha (Debby Ryan), whom Ben meets at one of Alice’s parties. Yes, both Autumn and Sasha are white, seemingly bolstering Miko’s case for Ben’s hypocrisy. 

Adrian Tomine’s script, based on his graphic novel, is handled as a series of vignettes that depict Ben’s slow unraveling, and the question of whether he’s a misunderstood defender of Asian American integrity (his P.O.V.) or just a self-centered jerk (everyone else’s view). Director Park — best known for playing the dad on “Fresh Off the Boat,” and FBI agent Jimmy Woo in the Marvel franchise — does Tomine’s story proud, generating a ton of laughs and more than a few insights that upend the romantic-comedy cliches.

Min is outstanding as Ben, which will be no surprise to those who caught him in “After Yang” last year. The supporting cast — which includes Jacob Batalon (from the “Spider-Man” movies) and Sonoya Mizuno (who was the bride in “Crazy Rich Asians”) — is stellar, with Cola shining brightest as the frequently lovelorn Alice. Together with Park’s smart direction, they make “Shortcomings” the AAPI-affirming movie Ben himself might have made if he wasn’t so self-absorbed.

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‘Shortcomings’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity.  Running time: 95 minutes.

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This review first appeared on this website on January 23, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Dreamin' Wild' shows the strength of family bonds and the pitfalls of a musical dream

The biographical family drama “Dreamin’ Wild” is a moving true story of a musician who took a chance on his dreams — and waited 30 years for it to finally pay off.

In 1979, 15-year-old Donnie Emerson and his 17-year-old brother, Joe, recorded an album in the studio their dad built them on their farm in Fruitland, Washington, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. The album never went anywhere, and years later boxes of vinyl LPs sat in the basement of the farm house. 

In 2011, where the story picks up, Joe (Walton Goggins) built a house on the farm, near their parents, Don Sr. and Salina (Beau Bridges and Barbara Deering). Donnie (Casey Affleck) moved to Spokane and runs a less-than-successful recording studio with his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), with whom he’s raising two children and performing cover songs at weddings.

Then Donnie gets a weird phone call, from Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), who runs a boutique record label that specializes in undiscovered gems. A few copies of the Emerson brothers’ album, “Dreamin’ Wild,” have become a find for vinyl collectors — and Sullivan thinks the album could be a hit, more than 30 years after the brothers recorded it.

Sullivan promises the brothers that they won’t lose any money — and may, he says, make them some money. He also tells Donnie and Joe that he thinks the brothers can go on tour, starting with a record label party in Seattle.

The prospect of performing again is exciting to Joe, but less so for Donnie — who worries that they won’t be good enough, and that the hopeful, romantic songs he wrote as a teen don’t hold up when sung by a guy in his 40s who’s been beaten down by life. The tension between the brothers brings up memories of their childhood (seen in flashbacks, with Noah Jupe as the young Donnie and Jack David Grazer as the young Joe), and the sacrifices their dad made to let the boys pursue their musical dream.

Writer-director Bill Pohlad — who made the thoughtful 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy,” with Paul Dano and John Cusack playing Brian Wilson at different ages — doesn’t go for easy sentimentality or a Cinderella story ending. Musical success is far less important here than the relationship between the brothers, and how the years have darkened their outlook but hasn’t frayed their family bond.

Goggins and Bridges give soulful performances, capturing the love Joe and Don Sr. have for Donnie and the faith they have in his talent. In the central role, Affleck conveys Donnie’s ambivalence toward his musical gifts, which he has learned are as much a source of heartbreak as of joy. 

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‘Dreamin’ Wild’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated PG for language and thematic elements. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: 'Haunted Mansion' shows turning Disneyland's attraction into a movie remains a bad idea, 20 years after the last time they tried it

With the box-office success of “Barbie,” Hollywood studios are once again looking to their existing intellectual property — the past books, movies, TV shows, video games, toys and other franchises — to save their financial skins.

Before the suits get too excited, though, maybe they should look at Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” as a cautionary tale of what happens with bad IP happens to good people.

This is Disney’s second attempt at making a feature-length comedy action movie based on the Disneyland attraction — and apparently there’s no one in Disney’s front office who remembers the one from 2003, starring Eddie Murphy, which was pretty terrible. (There was a Disney+ special in 2021, “Muppet Haunted Mansion,” which I’m willing to try someday because it’s the Muppets — and because it’s only 52 minutes long.)

The mansion in this telling is bought online by Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), a widowed New York doctor, who is relocating to New Orleans with her dorky 9-year-old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). But after one night in their new house, they realize it’s haunted by a lot of ghosts — some scarier than others — and that the ghosts follow them if they leave.

Gabbie starts hunting around for someone who can handle her ghost problem. First she enlists a priest, Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who may be a little too relaxed for the job. Father Kent finds Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), an astrophysicist who operates walking tours of haunted New Orleans landmarks — a job he took over from his wife, Alyssa (Charity Jordan), who died just after the movie’s prologue.

Ben has invented a camera that shoots spectral images that could, theoretically, capture images of ghosts.

Because of Ben’s skepticism, and whole grief-stricken vibe, Gabbie and Father Kent find more people to help: Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), a medium who knows a bit about spells, and Prof. Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), a historian who knows about New Orleans’ ghostly real estate doings. It’s through Harriet that the group meets Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis), a disembodied head in a crystal ball who knows the spell that could end the haunting — and bring down the malicious Hatbox Ghost (played by Jared Leto, under a lot of prosthetics and computer animation). 

The screenplay, by Katie Dippold (“Ghostbusters: Answer the Call”), hits all the familiar touchstones of the Disneyland ride — the hitchhiking ghosts, the ghost-filled ballroom, the stretchy living room, and so on. What’s missing is a plot that connects those ideas coherently, or characters we should care about as they run through the story’s machinations.

Meanwhile, director Justin Simien is hamstrung in his first major studio assignment, and brings none of the comic timing he showed in his indie debut, the 2014 college satire “Dear White People.” It doesn’t help that the actors don’t connect, and give the impression that they were randomly kidnapped from the same Hollywood party and are being forced to finish the movie before they can see their families again.

The movie does end, in a murky storm of computer effects. Where “Haunted Mansion” fails to generate laughs, it does evoke feelings of terror — mostly the fear that Disney will trot out this IP again in 20 years.

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‘Haunted Mansion’

★1/2

Opens Friday, July 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Talk to Me' is an authentically terrifying horror movie, with young Australian leads who will be going places

Mythology is everything in a horror movie, because if you get the mythology behind the scares right, everything else falls into place — and the Australian horror thriller “Talk to Me” has a powerful mythology that drives the story in unsettling ways.

A group of high school kids are playing with forces they, of course, shouldn’t be messing with. One of them has acquired an embalmed hand, encased in ceramic and covered with graffiti, that can be used to commune with the spirits of the dead. Or, at least, that’s how we’re told the mythology goes. 

One sits in a chair, gets strapped in with a belt just in case, and someone else lights a candle. The person shakes hands with the embalmed hand and says “talk to me.” If that isn’t enough, the person then says “I let you in,” and then stuff really starts happening. After 90 seconds, the person’s friends try to break the person out of the spell by blowing out the candle.

When Mia (Sophie Wilde), whose mother died recently under odd circumstances, tries the game with the hand, things get weird. Her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), doesn’t like what she’s seeing — and likes it even less when her 14-year-old brother, Riley (Joe Bird), tries it, with brutal consequences. To save Riley, and herself, Mia becomes convinced she has to cross over again and find her mother’s spirit.

The cast is mostly unknown in America — the exception is Miranda Otto, from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as Jade and Riley’s mum — but that situation will be rectified soon enough. The young cast, particularly Wilde and Jensen, bring a relatable seriousness to the creepy events.

Brothers Danny and Michael Phillipou directed the film, while Danny Phillipou co-wrote with Bill Hinzman (based on a concept by Daley Pearson) — and the brothers have a keen grasp on how to deliver solid chills. There are a few scenes best (or at least most likely) viewed through one’s fingers, but little feels gratuitous or unnecessary. The terror of “Talk to Me” is well-earned.

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‘Talk to Me’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Theater Camp' is a 'Guffman'-like mock-documentary with lots of laughs, and an ensemble that gets the weirdness of summer camp

It’s not often that a movie sets up as many jokes, and lands so many of them, as the semi-improvised comedy “Theater Camp,” which feels a bit like “Waiting for Guffman” for a new generation.

The setting is AdirondActs, a ramshackle summer camp for theater kids in upstate New York. We first see the camp’s founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris), attending a middle school production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” looking for prospective campers, when a strobe effect causes Joan to have a seizure that puts her in a coma — the first time, we’re told in this mock-documentary, that someone has become comatose in a “Bye Bye Birdie”-related accident.

While Joan is hospitalized, her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) takes over operations — but as a dude-bro YouTube influencer, Troy doesn’t have the business skills or theater knowledge to run the camp. The bank is close to foreclosing on the camp property, and Caroline (Patti Harrison), the corporate rep for the more expensive theater camp next door, is waving an offer at him.

Meanwhile, life at the camp goes on. The central figures among the teaching staff are the drama director, Amos (Ben Platt), and the music director, Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), who lead the casting decisions for the drama-loving campers. They also, by tradition, write and direct an original musical each year that the campers perform — and this year’s musical will be a tuneful biography of Joan.

Gordon (best known for her roles in “Booksmart” and “Shiva Baby”) and Nick Lieberman (who has directed many of Platt’s music videos) directed “Theater Camp,” and they co-wrote it along with Platt and Noah Galvin — who shines as Glenn, the camp’s overworked technical director. The script is informed by the quartet’s experiences as theater camp kids, and leaves room for plenty of improvised moments that show how wickedly talented they are and how much they enjoy working together. 

Gordon and Lieberman stay true to the Christopher Guest school of mock-documentaries. There are no reality-show confessional interviews, and never an ironic look to the camera, a la “The Office.”

Gordon and Platt — best friends since childhood, Gordon said after the movie’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival — have such amazing chemistry that they seem to finish each other’s sentences. Platt’s performance here, as a blowhard drama teacher, may redeem his career after the tragedy that was the “Dear Evan Hansen” movie.

Others in the cast who shine are Ayo Edebiri as a newly hired teacher with no expertise, Nathan Lee Graham (“Zoolander”) as an imperious dance instructor, and Owen Thiele as the camp’s quite fabulous costume designer. But the real finds in “Theater Camp” are the array of child actors who give hilarious performances as the camp’s eager students.

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‘Theater Camp’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and suggestive/drug references. Running time: 92 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.