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Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra turn in a tight ten-minute back-and-forth this week, a consequence of Schulz having seen two films and two previews, total. He usually has more than that, you understand. But that, apparently, is how the season is shaking out: After Beetlejuice Beetlejuice next week, he’ll be catching the new, animated Transformers film. In addition to all these incredibly important dates to keep, Schulz is also directing A Streetcar Named Desire at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, so he’s got quite a bit going on in his life right now.
The films under review:
- Reagan (dir Sean McNamara, starr Dennis “Gipper” Quaid, Penelope Ann “Mommy” Miller, Nick Searcy, C Thomas Howell, Kevin Dillon, Mena Suvari, Robert Davi, Lesley-Anne Down, and Jon Voight). Levora says it all here: “The egg forgot to duck” and “The cheerleader shot me.” Clocking in at two hours and fifteen minutes, Reagan’s narrative feels like a pinball machine, manic in its pacing and touching practically every moment of consequence in the Gipper’s life save his conception. With all those prosthetics, and some de-aging software, Quaid looks like the breakdancing robot before it caught on fire. That million-dollar smile of his? Inflation caught up with it. The passage of time has turned Quaid from playboy hunk to kill-crazy jackal predator. However, if you happen to adore Reagan, then none of this need matter. You can grit your teeth and smile at Quaid’s approximation of Reaganesque qualities from start to finish. Bon appétit!
- AfrAId (dir Chris Weitz, starr John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, David Dastmalchian, and Keith Carradine). Schulz thought the film had “a lot of ideas,” although it sounds like most of them came from Dean R Koontz’s Demon Seed (1977, dir Donald Cammell, starr Julie Christie and Fritz Weaver). It starts promisingly, but becomes your standard latter-day horror film, where the filmmakers’ intent seems to be whether or not they can get you to spill your drink in your lap. At eighty-four minutes, though, it doesn’t make serious demands on your time like a certain other film. . .
And so, too, the previews:
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (dir Tim Burton, starr Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, and Willem Dafoe). Highly anticipated, with a $100 million budget. Expectations high; the drop could be deadly. It looks like Keaton will be on-screen this time longer than the sixteen minutes of the 1989 original. Hopefully, Burton won’t leave his audience regretting why Time has to move relentlessly forward. . .
- The Front Room (dir Max and Sam Eggers, starr Brandy, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap, and Neal Huff). Another A24 film, so a certain baseline quality is expected here. Again, hopefully, this psychological horror film won’t get all its horror jolts from the directors yelling “PSYCH!” over and over again. . .