As his fourth feature begins, British filmmaker Alex Garland doesn't mess about. There's no prologue, no opening crawl, no exposition dump. The time could be now, or it could be just a few years in the future, because everything looks much the same, except the country is at war. With itself.
In a sense, that's exactly what's happening in 2024 with red and blue state America, except Garland isn't as interested in liberal vs. conservative as in war itself, though the film's primary antagonists, mostly camo-clad white men, have all the markings of insurrectionists. Instead, the director explores what a first-world civil war might look like, sound like, and especially feel like in the 21st century. And how it might affect a combat photographer.
Garland introduces Reuters photojournalists Lee (an effectively hard-bitten Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura of Elite Squad and Netflix's Narcos) by showing them in action, crouching fast and low, hands gripped tightly around their cameras, getting as close to a New York riot as possible, and then slipping away as quickly as they can. In the melee, Lee spots the petite Jessie (Cailee Spaeny from Garland's FX series Devs), an amateur photographer, who gets walloped by a cop. Like a mother hen, she whisks her away to safety. Not only is Jessie okay, but she recognizes the photographer. In fact, she's an ardent admirer who aspires to emulate her.
After chatting for a bit, they go their separate ways, with Lee giving the distinct impression she thinks this kid is a bit of an idiot. She's not wrong--though 23, Jessie looks and acts much younger. If Lee seems condescending or judgmental, it's more that she wants to dispel Jessie's naïve and idealistic views of photojournalism, but without completely scaring her away.
That night, she runs into Jessie at the hotel where she has returned to connect with Joel and Sammy (the always welcome Stephen McKinley Henderson from Devs and Dune), an older New York Times reporter.
Jessie swears--not all that convincingly--she hasn't been stalking her, but Lee has her doubts. The younger woman explains that the hotel serves as a known meeting place for photojournalists, and she wants to get in on the action. To Lee, she's starting to become as annoying as a relentless gnat.
Though she and Joel make a few japes about Sammy's age, he can take it, and he's just as quick to make the occasional self-deprecating remark (it doesn't help Sammy's cause that he hikes his sansabelt pants up as high as they can go). If he's more patient and philosophical than his less seasoned colleagues, he's also a softer touch. Consequently, Lee wakes up to find that he has invited Jessie to join the crew for a treacherous trip to Washington DC where Joel hopes to interview the embattled President (Nick Offerman, also from Devs).
As much as Spaeny impressed me in Priscilla, she's fairly insufferable here, which may be the point, but I was never certain since she's positioned as an audience surrogate, and those kinds of characters tend to be more sympathetic. They serve as conduits to sights and sounds likely to be unfamiliar to most audience members, except she consistently makes the same stupid mistakes, and doesn't seem to be especially perturbed by her incompetence. Even at the end, when she has supposedly learned a thing or two about close-range combat photography, adults in her vicinity are constantly pushing her out of the way of gunfire as if she were a child.
I don't mean to harp too much on Spaeny, but she's also positioned as a sort of Eve Harrington figure, which makes Lee the film's designated Margo Channing, and the final sequence bears out this reading in an exceptionally blunt manner. It just felt as if Garland had combined two archetypes in a way that never fully coalesced. Then again, it's not as if the world is exactly bereft of self-involved young people who are just as likely to endanger themselves as others by letting their passions get away from them.
Though "war" is right there in the title, I found myself caught up more in the interpersonal dynamics than the harrowing battles the photojournalists witness along their travels. In that sense, the film reminded me of Danny Boyle's brilliant 28 Days Later, for which Garland wrote the screenplay. Instead of "rage zombies," it's humans--and high-powered weaponry--that represent the biggest threat to the protagonists.
Though some viewers have decried the film's apolitical stance, I wouldn't go that far. It may not be as pointedly political as they would prefer, but there are numerous references to our Divided States of America, as a 2016 episode of Frontline put it. For one thing, no one trusts the President. He's just an empty suit saying scripted words devoid of any real meaning. He's an Orwellian figure in a shinier package. He isn't Trump, but he's lost control of his country, and he's mostly just cowering in his taxpayer-funded mansion.
Another is the militia man played by Jesse Plemons (reuniting with wife Kirsten Dunst, in a manner of speaking, after their turn as a married couple in The Power of the Dog). His xenophobic cruelty knows no bounds. Though he lacks a red cap, he's got eerie red sunglasses instead. Close enough. As chilling as Plemons was in Breaking Bad, he's absolutely terrifying here.
Then there are the Deliverance-style sadists at the gas station. More of the same, basically. And it's impossible not to recall the incendiary imagery of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol when rebel forces, with the photojournalists embedded, storm the White House at the end.
None of this is to suggest that Garland is giving Peter Watkins a run for the money, but his antifascist sympathies are clear (nonetheless, he has been taken to task for using footage shot by right-wing troll Andy Ngo and by thanking controversial Guardian journalist Helen Lewis in the credits).
For my money, Garland still hasn't topped, or even equaled, his first two science fiction films, Ex Machina and Annihilation (which he hoped to turn into a series), but I'll take Civil War over Men, his decidedly feminist, if unsatisfying take on folk horror. Every one of these films, in addition to Devs, which wasn't renewed for a second season, features women at the center of the action, and it's one of the defining characteristics of his work.
If I found Cailee Spaeny irritating for reasons possibly beyond her control, I came away more impressed, as I often am, by Kirsten Dunst. Unusually for a former child actor, she makes no attempt to present Lee as likeable, in favor of respectable, but Jessie isn't wrong when she says, "You're pretty when you smile," which she doesn't do often. She's just a strong woman doing a tough job against unbelievable odds, much like the women of Annihilation.
Dunst's character represents a past--an experienced, dedicated journalist--that is rapidly disappearing, while Jessie--an easily distracted amateur--represents the future. It's no wonder Lee's smiles are in short supply.
Civil War opens Thurs, Apr 11, at the Uptown, most everywhere else on Fri, Apr 12. Images: IMDb (Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura), AnOther Magazine (Cailee Spaeny), the IMDb (Stephen McKinley Henderson), Decider (Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, and Naomie Harris in 28 Days Later), Screen Rant (Spaeney and Jesse Plemons), and Yahoo Movies (Dunst).
"It's a revolting exploitation film."--Jean Dietrich, The Courier-Journal
When Matt Stone (Chad Walker) was a boy, he awoke late one night to find his mother entertaining a soldier (Blood Feast's Bill Kerwin). He couldn't figure out what they were doing, but he found it disturbing, and so the minute the man became aggressive, Matt grabbed the nearest sharp implement--his deceased father's samurai sword--and plunged it into his abdomen. It isn't clear if things would have blown over or if the guy really intended to rape his mother. Afterward, Matt puts his pinky in the corner of his mouth in a proto-Dr. Evil gesture meant to convey little-boy confusion.
William Grefé, a Florida filmmaker known for B-movie schlockers like 1967's Death Curse of Tartu--presents this opening sequence in black and white before switching to color to introduce the fully-grown Matt, now played by William Shatner in excellent form. It's up the audience to decide whether Matt was always a sociopath or whether protectiveness of his mother made him murder out of necessity. Instead of gratitude, though, she expressed deep disappointment afterward, and that appears to have stuck with him. One way or the other: the incident shaped Matt Stone. And not for the good.
As the opening credits dance across the screen, Matt watches a beautiful belly dancer (Paula Dimitrouleas) shimmy in a silver sequined outfit. He cuts a striking figure in his Herb Tarlek-style 1970s threads with a cigarillo in one hand, a cocktail in the other, and a smarmy, lustful look on his face.
After her performance, Matt invites the dancer into his convertible while the middle-aged Helen (Marcia Knight) watches from a nearby car, seething.
After his dalliance, Helen, who has been supporting Matt, confronts him. As they argue, anger escalates on both sides, leading Matt to bark, "Big, tough broad, aren't you?," at which point he strangles her to death, leaving Helen leaning against the car door, tongue lolling to the side of her mouth, a Grefé signature as much as the random shot of a (fully-clothed) lady's ass.
Instead of a sense of relief, Matt seems shocked by his own strength. For all his fear and rage, he isn't a complete monster, and he had only meant to shut her up--not to kill her.
Nonetheless, his animalistic cry of anguish afterward could be read as regret over the loss of his meal ticket as much as that of a fellow human being. It's also possible he's simply scared of getting caught by the police, so he thinks fast, puts the key in the ignition, turns it, and pushes the car into the lake, where it sinks beneath the water.
Matt may be free, but he has apparently been sponging off of rich widows for years, using his charm and good looks to reel them in. Shatner was 43 at the time, just young enough to play this sort of character, but the clock is ticking on Matt's slimy lifestyle, and he doesn't appear to have any other skills. Grefé only doles out as much information as necessary, and not a jot more, so it isn't clear if Matt ever even received a proper education.
If he has a car, and the cash he swiped from the Helen's wallet, Matt lacks any visible means of support. His victim also left him with a scratch across his face, but it will heal in a convenient instant. In short order, he composes himself, packs up his belongings, and heads to Tampa to find a new benefactor. Grefé then introduces single mother Ann (Jennifer Bishop, terrific) and her bratty 12-year-old daughter, Tina (Kim Nicholas, irritating, yet effective).
Matt meets Tina first, completely by accident. As he's driving, he spots the small blonde, who has ditched school, hitchhiking in order to visit her father's grave. I was afraid, at this point, that Matt might also revealed as a child molester, but once again--as terrible as he may be--he has his limits. If anything, he seems to think he's doing a good deed, and in a manner of speaking, he is, since someone even worse could have picked her up.
Though Tina is grateful for the ride, Matt shocks her when a dog darts into the road, he accidentally drives over it, realizes what he's done, and plunges on ahead. Tina knows in an instant that something is not quite right with this guy. Later that afternoon, Matt just happens to visit the notions store her mother owns and operates while she's positioned on a ladder, arranging a display. Just as Ann (Jennifer Bishop from Grefé's Mako: The Jaws of Death) slips and starts to fall backward, she lands in Matt's sturdy arms, and a spark is ignited. To Grefé's credit, this isn't as hokey as it sounds.
At first, these are just chance encounters. Matt books a motel room, and immediately tumbles into bed with the pretty, flirtatious hotel clerk (Marcy Lafferty, Shatner's lady love and future wife). He isn't looking for anything more than a good time, and he gets it. In his commentary track, Grefé says that Shatner insisted he cast Lafferty. That sort of thing can be problematic when an actor's squeeze lacks skill, but she's a lively, sparky presence.
The scenario shifts into overdrive when Matt meets Julia (The Baby's Ruth Roman in a fine and feisty turn), Ann's outspoken, maternal friend. The two widows pal around with Clarence (Flying Leathernecks' James Dobson), a gay-coded character who is never explicitly identified as such, though it's clear he harbors no romantic or sexual intentions towards the women.
Julia invites Matt to join them for dinner at her mansion--which comes complete with fish tanks and suits of armor--in hopes of matching him up with her lonely friend. Matt has also convinced her he's a financial adviser who can boost her stock earnings. He passes himself off to Ann in a similar manner, though he's also attracted to the more age-appropriate option.
If Matt charms the adults, Tina remains convinced he's up to no good, so she sets out to find proof beyond the dog incident, which her mother brushes off as a made-up story. After all, the girl would rather not see her mother date anyone ever again, and not just scheming sleaze-mongers like Matt.
In his commentary, Grefé notes that Matt was a lady killer in Tony Crechales' original script, titled Want a Ride, Little Girl?, but he wasn't a con man. He also explains that Tina was intended to be sympathetic, but whether due to Nicholas's inexperience or his hurried direction, the Miami native comes across as a brat. As Matt puts it, she's a "mean, jealous, vicious little girl." He's not wrong, but she's also clever, perceptive--and correct.
The dinner party is such a success that Matt asks Ann out on a date. Everything seems to be going swimmingly as they stroll through the park on a Sunday afternoon until a woman carrying balloons bumps into Matt just as he is about to head up the escalator. With Ann out of earshot, Matt hisses, "You fat--people like you should be ground up and made into dog food!"
After he catches up with his date, she asks, "What was that about?" He says it wasn't anything, and they go on their way...all the while watched by a muscular, Japanese-American mystery man named Karate Pete (former weightlifter, professional wrestler, and cult actor Harold "Oddjob" Sakata).
Tina also watches the pair whenever she can sneak away from the house. When she sees her mother enter Matt's motel room, she becomes more dedicated than ever to exposing his rot.
Once Ann has left, Matt heads out to meet up with his former cellmate. Though he tries to reason with the thug, Pete threatens to expose him if he doesn't give him a cut of the action. Matt makes some vague promises, as is his wont, and takes his leave.
Meanwhile, Tina escalates her brave, if foolhardy campaign by entering Matt's unlocked car to hide in the backseat and follow him to his next meeting with Pete.
After exchanging words and fisticuffs, Matt manages to get the drop on the guy and strings him up by a rope in an attempt to strangle him. In real life, this stuntman-free stunt didn't go as planned; Shatner broke his finger and Sakata nearly met his maker.
When Pete manages to free a hand, he pulls out a knife and cuts the rope, leading to an inspired chase through a car wash. Pete may be strong, but he's only so fast, and Matt runs him over with his car. It's the end of Pete and the end of Matt's financial obligation--and Tina saw the whole thing.
She makes herself Matt's next target when he later spots her exiting his car. He chases, but doesn't catch up to to her. Ann then invites Tina to join her and Matt on their second date, leading to surreptitious looks between the two whenever Ann's gaze drifts elsewhere. The minute Tina gets her mother alone, she tries to detail the horrors she witnessed the night before, but once again, the besotted Ann brushes off her increasingly tall tales.
All the while, Matt's past haunts him, and Grefé frequently cuts away to the incident with the soldier in addition to encounters with the previous women with whom Matt has tangled. Not only is his situation growing more desperate, his mind is growing progressively muddled, so he sets out to do all he can to get Julia and Ann to willingly hand over their money, and then abscond with the spoils as quickly as humanly possible.
This leads to threats, arguments, breaking and entering, physical altercations, a chase through a graveyard and a funeral home, and some rather bloody kills--even a fish tank doubles as a weapon. It would be a crime to say more, but Grefé wraps the film up in satisfying style.
Though there's some psychological complexity to the premise, I don't mean to make Impulse sound more sophisticated than it is. It's a low-budget production that was shot in 15 days and designed for the grindhouse circuit where it thrived despite, and maybe even because of, some pretty damning reviews. If anything, it's only through a stroke of luck that it turned out as good as it did, because it might have faded from view without Shatner's participation. Not least because he doesn't phone it in, though Atlanta Journal critic Barbara Thomas, among others, felt otherwise when she wrote, "William Shatner is the poorest excuse for a deranged killer we've seen in many a day." (Suffice to say, female critics did not dig this film.)
As Grefé explains in his commentary, he and the producer were heading out to Hollywood to cast the film when they ran into the actor in the Miami airport. They buttonholed Shatner to explain the project, and amazingly, he said yes. Right there on the spot. As Grefé adds, Shatner received no points on the original Star Trek, so he wasn't exactly riding high in the early-1970s, and though he has a reputation for his sizeable ego, he and Grefé got along so well that they would work together again on a series of Bacardi minimovies. Sadly, Shatner has since dismissed the film as the result of cash-strapped decision-making, even as it has only grown in estimation over the years.
If Impulse would still probably work without him, bolstered by solid performances from Jennifer Bishop and Ruth Roman--who appeared in Hitchcock's 1951 masterpiece Strangers on a Train--Shatner makes the film the cult hit it would become, to the extent that it's now available as part of a two-disc set bursting with over 15 hours of extras, including short films, featurettes, commercials, a postcard-sized portrait of Matt Stone suitable for framing, and earlier Grefé features, like black and white 1966 docudrama The Devil's Sisters and the seriously unfunny, money-losing 1973 comedy The Godmothers with Mickey Rooney and Billy Barty.
Grefé even provides a commentary track for the former, a roughie about sex trafficking in Mexico that isn't always easy to watch, and nor should it be, but the real story is more horrifying than anything the director depicted.
Like many people who grew up with Star Trek, Shatner became an icon in my world, and I've continued to follow some, but not all, of his big- and small-screen projects, especially the great Columbo guest appearances, and all five seasons of Boston Legal, which David E. Kelley spun-off The Practice on the strength of Shatner's scene-stealing turns as entertainingly fatuous attorney Denny Crane.
Though I took a pass on cop show T.J. Hooker and short-lived sitcom $#*! My Dad Says, Shatner made Boston Legal destination TV, especially in his scenes opposite James Spader's Alan Shore--a character also introduced on The Practice--in which the unlikely duo regularly upped each other's game.
In the case of Impulse, there's another performance-enhancing detail worth mentioning, and that's the costuming. Grefé worked out a deal with a local haberdashery to supply all of Shatner's outfits as Matt Stone, and they contribute to the appeal of both character and film. Most every shirt has the loudest print imaginable, everything is made from slick polyester, and bizarro accessories, like a big white pimp hat, add to the skeevy effect.
In the years to come, Shatner would become a certified award-winner with a fistful of Emmy statuettes, but he's always been a contentious figure when it comes to his talent. Is he a bad actor who is enjoyable to watch simply because of a unique alchemy of charisma and vibes or is he a good, but highly idiosyncratic actor whose staccato vocal inflections and feral gestures indicate genuine dramatic skill? I believe both things can be true. He's irresistible for comedians to impersonate, and yet there's no one else like him, and he's riveting in Impulse from start to finish. It isn't necessarily an Academy Award-caliber performance, but for what it is: it's perfect.
The 4K restoration of Impulse, constructed from an archival 35mm release print, is out now in a two-Blu-ray set from Grindhouse Releasing. Images from GR (William Shatner and Chad Walker), DoBlu.com (Kim Nicholas), The Bloody Pit of Horror (Shatner with Jennifer Bishop and Ruth Roman), House of Self Indulgence (Shatner and Nicholas), Indiewire (Star Trek-era Shatner with tribbles), and the IMDb (Sharon Saxon in The Devil's Sisters).
(Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, UK, 99 minutes)
A new twist on the rape-revenge thriller, the victim-turned-vigilante of Femme isn't a woman, but rather a cisgender male drag performer. Rather than sexual assault, a violent attack--a gay bash, as he terms it--spurs him to take revenge on his attacker.
Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who played drag performer Belize in the 2017 revival of Angels in America) is part of London's drag community. When he's outfitted as his alter ego, Aphrodite Banks, he looks a little like Cardi B with his long braids, short skirt, and towering heels. His drag family is a supportive bunch. The outside world may have its racists and homophobes, but inside the Phallacy, everyone is welcome.
Outside the club, he becomes wary and watchful, knowing that he could be a target.
In a convenience store after a performance, still in drag, Jules finds himself eyed by some hoods, including Preston (a tattooed George MacKay), who doesn't like what he sees--or maybe he likes it too much. He insults Jules-as-Aphrodite, he insults him back, and that might be the end of that, except Jules calls him a "faggot," since he caught him checking him out earlier that evening.
What happens next is not a surprise, it sets the film in motion, but if you're anything like me, you'll want to look away (fortunately, this sequence is mercifully short). Though he tries to fight back, they outnumber Jules. The men beat him up, tear off his clothes, capture it all on video, and walk away laughing into the night, leaving him alone and shivering. Instead of going home, he returns to the club where he gets the help he needs.
Three months later, Jules is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and has stopped performing, so I would imagine that his roommate and best friend, Toby (John McCrea), is paying their bills. Initially supportive, Toby has grown exasperated by Jules's antisocial demeanor, but what he doesn't know is that his friend isn't mired in depression so much as thoughts of revenge. Instead of using dialogue to get this idea across, co-directors Freeman and Ng, who expanded their feature from a 2021 short with Harris Dickinson and Paapa Essiedu, show him obsessively playing a violent video game.
At a gay sauna, while in his male persona, Jules spots Preston, who doesn't recognize him. Though Preston presents himself as aggressively straight, he has a knack for circling spaces where gay men tend to congregate, and then loses his shit if anyone hits on him or questions his heterosexuality.
Instead of avoiding Preston, Jules watches him and expresses interest with his eyes. Preston invites him into his car, and he gets in. Earlier on, before the attack, he had mentioned to Toby that he found the white guy cute, so it isn't exactly a one-way street. They head to his flat, where Preston warns him to keep his distance. He doesn't want anyone to see that he has a somewhat feminine-looking guest, though a motel room would make more sense (in a different kind of film, Preston might also be racist, except his crew includes Oz, a biracial member, and race never comes up).
Preston shuts his bedroom door, and orders Jules to take off his clothes and not to say a word. He does as he is told. They begin to fuck. Then voices emerge from Preston's flat as his friends tumble into it, either because they have a key or because he left the door unlocked. He orders Jules to stay put, but he opens the closet door instead, spots the yellow hoodie Preston was wearing the night of the attack, puts it on, removes his pearl earring, and steps out to meet the men who attacked him. It's the beginning of Jules's drag as a non-femme, though I wouldn't describe him as butch. Preston introduces him as a prison friend, at which point, Jules quickly takes his leave. In private, they plan to meet again. "Dress normal," Preston instructs in a text. "Not faggy."
When he gets home, Jules looks into websites in which gay men expose closeted sex partners by filming them in the act. Once again, he doesn't say a word, but it's clear what he's thinking. By this point, I was wondering if all this silence was really such a great idea. Then again, it's possible the filmmakers were riffing on revenge classics like Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence or Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 in which the vigilante protagonists, male and female respectively, keep mum. What might be seen as weakness, passivity, or vulnerability means to register as a quiet, stealth strength.
Jules starts making plans for revenge, but it isn't well thought out. As he considers his options, he plays Preston's secret boyfriend. For their first semi-public outing, they dine at a nice restaurant, where Preston fails to clock that his date doesn't say much. He wants to do and say everything, to be in charge. It doesn't change the fact that he's gay, or that he's a white man who treats his Black companion the way unenlightened men treat women, i.e. as people who need to be told how to dress and what to eat. If the screenplay doesn't reference race, that doesn't mean it doesn't factor into the scenario. The world Jules inhabits is largely white, but he isn't.
Jules lets Preston think what he wants. If he's plotting revenge, he's also trying to understand the guy. What makes him tick? Does he have a good side? Is he redeemable? After all, he traffics in knockoff designer goods, and pays for everything in cash. So, he isn't just a self-hating gay man, he's a crook, a thief, a criminal.
If the sex, which isn't explicit, plays like rape, that's because it's aggressive and because we know Jules doesn't want it--initially--though he gives his consent. Preston seems to think Jules wants to be treated in a demeaning manner. After all, some men--some women--do. Preston is demeaning to him in non-sexual ways, too, but he puts up with it while biding his time. He doesn't pretend that he loves it, but nor does he suggest otherwise. If anything, the screenplay is just ambiguous enough to suggest that Jules can want to take his revenge and enjoy some rough sex along the way.
By this point, I was reminded of In the Cut. If Jane Campion gave her a film a happier ending than the one that concludes Susanna Moore's novel, it's still an uncompromising portrait of a seemingly intelligent woman (Meg Ryan) who puts herself--and her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh)--in harm's way to expose a serial killer of women. Jules's risk-taking is just as dangerous and foolhardy, because no one knows what he's doing. He's on his own.
When Preston's friends take a shine to Jules, who has adopted a more traditionally masculine look, the situation becomes more complicated. Preston doesn't want to be outed and Jules doesn't want another beat down, but if they're too precious about their relationship, Preston's mates might start to figure out that there's something more than friendship at play.
Jules takes advantage of a night on the town with the crew to learn more about Preston whom Oz (Love/Hate's Aaron Heffernan) describes as a man who "goes full-on psycho" when he's upset, like "a pit bull that's been dropped on his head too many times." The screenplay never explains this side of his character, and I'm not sure that it matters, though his accent indicates a rough-hewn background. If Jules has no back story either, he comes across as more refined and possibly better educated.
Acceptance by Preston's friends through gaming, dancing, and general camaraderie provides him with another weapon to wield against the guy, since he's no longer a complete outsider. This happens pretty quickly, probably too quickly, but he starts to treat Preston the way Preston has been treating him, possibly sensing that-- macho bluster aside--he also longs to be dominated, particularly by someone he believes he can trust.
After their night out with the crew, Preston crashes at Jules's place, and spends the next morning with his crew, which only adds to the confusion, since Preston must surely suspect that Toby, a fellow drag performer, is gay, though he doesn't say anything (Asha Reid plays their female roommate, Alicia).
Just as the film begins with a drag performance, it ends with one, too, though there is otherwise very little drag in the film. I won't say more about the ending than that, because everything has been leading up to it, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Revenge films, rape-revenge or otherwise, tend to end in a specific way, usually with the protagonist vanquishing their foe and sometimes several collaborators along the way. That doesn't happen here, which will surely disappoint anyone expecting the grindhouse fare hinted by the premise. On the contrary, the filmmakers took their cues from film noir, the erotic thriller, and yes, RuPaul's Drag Race.
By the end, we don't know for sure whether Jules has developed feelings for Preston, though we know for sure that Preston has developed feelings for Jules. In the production notes, Freeman and Ng, both gay, have described Femme as a film about drag since both men are wearing a kind of masculine drag. (Though MacKay, who played a gay protagonist in Pride, identifies as straight, Stewart-Jarrett, who first came to my attention by way of the BBC's Misfits, falls into the Tim Curry category: very gay-friendly, but he has always kept his private life to himself.)
Appearances aside, it's also a film about acting, which means that it has a lot in common with the undercover cop or spy film. As such, I wish the actors were more evenly-matched. They're both very good, but MacKay has the edge in that Preston is more dynamic and charismatic than Jules, even though he's clearly the bad guy. Some may take Jules's newfound assertiveness to mean that he has become more masculine, except the film is titled Femme, so it's possible that his strength comes more from Aphrodite, his fierce female persona, than Jules, his tame male persona--would that we all have access to that kind of power when we need it most.
Femme opens at IFC Center in New York on Mar 22, in Los Angeles and Chicago on Mar 29, and in Seattle at AMC 10 on Apr 4. It expands nationwide on Apr 5. Images from the IMDb (George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, together and separately), AnOther (MacKay and Aaron Heffernan), and MUBI (Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo in In the Cut).
"She's the brains and I'm the hands."--a daughter explains her role in her mother's life
For his beautiful and terrifying debut feature, UK filmmaker Robert Morgan builds his film around the painstaking animation technique of the title.
It's the same technique that brought Rankin/Bass's holiday perennial Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to sweet and fuzzy life in 1964, delighting generations of children, though it has also powered the terrifying visions of Czechoslovakia's Jan Švankmajer, Poland's Walerian Borowczyk, and England's American-born Brothers Quay, prolific shorts makers who have similarly melded live action with stop-motion in their features.
These are some of the best known stop-motion animators, but they're hardly alone, even if it isn't exactly a crowded field. With the proliferation of CGI, stop-motion has come to seem like an increasingly archaic art, though it's something most anyone can do--if they have the patience. It's a technical skill, too, but it requires the kind of preternatural patience most human beings lack. Case in point: Oscar-winning special effects supervisor Phil Tippett, who took 30 years to make 2021's horrifying and hilarious Mad God, his sole feature. Granted, he was busy working on various Star Wars and Jurassic Parks at the time, but he never gave up on his passion project.
That's the milieu in which Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi, an Irish actress who has an affinity for the dark side) grew up.
Morgan provides no backstory, and nor does he need to. If Ella ever had a live-in father, he's long gone and doesn't merit a single mention. An electrifying opening sequence combines strobe-light effects with red and green colored gels (or the appearance of colored gels) to present this lovely young lady as both angel and demon. Aren't we all, in a sense? It's just that life, and the way it unfolds, can push us in more of one direction than the other. That's definitely the case for Ella.
Though she should be on her own, this fully-grown adult lives with her domineering mother, Suzanne (veteran TV actress Stella Gonet), a stop-motion animator. It's possible Ella spent her youth simply watching Suzanne work--or trying to stay out of her way--but she now serves as her hands since arthritis has rendered them too rigid to move her one-eyed creatures by millimeters, photographing and cataloguing each movement in the process. Ella, in other words, is also an artist, but her mother doesn't see it that way; viewing her more as a tool or an extension of her own body.
As the film begins, Ella is still somewhat autonomous. She has an attentive boyfriend, Tom (Poldark's Tom York), who works in a realtor's office, and a social circle that includes his party girl sister, Polly (The Witcher's Therica Wilson-Read), who works at an ad agency, but she lacks any close friends. Though Tom fancies himself a musician, it's mostly wishful thinking.
At home, though, Ella also waits on her mother hand and foot, doing all of the things Suzanne can no longer do for herself, like cooking dinner and cutting her steak. This marks the beginning of the film's meat motif. Raw, cooked, sliced and diced--there's a lot of it in Stopmotion--serving as a reminder that humans are essentially meat, or as a certain Arizona band once put it, we're meat puppets;a notion this film takes literally.
Instead of praising her daughter for her loyalty and dedication, Suzanne consistently berates her, maintaining her dominance by convincing Ella she has no ideas of her own, and that if she does, they're surely worthless. Ella isn't convinced that the plot of her mother's latest film, which revolves around a community of Cyclopes, is especially compelling, but she keeps it to herself and does everything Suzanne asks of her exactly as instructed.
Morgan never explains why Suzanne doesn't hire a home health aid or other professional to help her around the flat, and it's another one of those questions that doesn't necessitate a definitive answer. It's possible she can't afford it on her cult filmmaker's salary. It's also possible that she's enough of a lonely, miserable narcissist--unlike Ella, she has no social circle whatsoever--that she prefers to boss her only daughter around.
I wouldn't say that Ella grins and bears her mother's abuse. The look on her face says it all; but we see more of her unhappiness than Suzanne ever does.
If her mother is a fairly one-dimensional character, though well played by Gonet, Ella has to reveal several facets over the course of the film, and Franciosi makes full use of her expressive face, effectively building from the subtle to the extreme, which also made her perfect for The Nightingale, Jennifer Kent's revenge thriller follow-up to The Babadook, in which Aisling lived up to the precedent set by the consistently-excellent Australian actress Essie Davis.
When Suzanne suffers a stroke that lands her in a coma, Ella is finally on her own, but she doesn't see her newfound freedom as a gift. There wouldn't be much of a film if she did. In fact, her first thought is to continue working on her mother's project. When this plan goes awry, Tom suggests she get her own place, since the bad vibes left in Suzanne's wake are doing a number on her psyche.
Using his connections, he lines up a spacious, if gloomy flat for her in a mostly-abandoned council estate. Though it's so run-down the elevator is on the blink, the estate recalls the modern, if eerie complex in Andrew Haigh's ghost story All of Us Strangers, which only ever appeared to be inhabited by the two men at the heart of the story.
There's only one other person here, too. The less said about this individual, who may or may not be a tenant, the better. Basically, they live in the area, they have a lot of free time, and they're curious about Ella's vocation, so she explains how stop-motion works, concluding, "I like it, and I'm good at it, and it feels like I'm bringing something to life." Boy, does she ever.
Though the change in location represents a chance at a new start, Ella is stymied for ideas until the guest tells her a story about a girl being chased through the woods by a scary figure. Ella becomes so taken with the concept that she builds an entire film around it. Though her mother worked primarily with felt, Ella starts out with mortician's wax until the guest suggests meat, dubbing the girl's nemesis the Ash Man after sprinkling ashes over his meat-covered armature. Though the perils of meat--rot, maggots, stench--would be obvious to any sane person, Ella's tenuous grasp on sanity deteriorates as she loses herself in her work to the exclusion of everything else.
If Franciosi appears in every scene, Morgan alternates between Ella's actions and her visions. The further she plunges into her film, the more it invades her consciousness, and the more he shows what she imagines, making minimal distinction between the two. The use of the girl, the man, and the house in the woods recalls 2018's The Wolf House by Chilean animators Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña (as with Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room, they filmed the entire thing in a museum). I have no idea if it served as inspiration, but there are similar ideas and techniques at work.
Though it isn't unusual for stop-motion animators to contribute sequences to live-action films, much as the Brothers Quay did for Julie Taymor's Frida and León and Cociña did more recently for Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid, Morgan handled, or at least supervised, the animation in Stopmotion himself, making the film a sort of warped self-portrait. Any kind of work this exacting, repetitive, and time-consuming could do a number on one's mental health, an idea taken in an entirely different direction in Ann Oren's portrait of a first-time Foley artist in last year's criminally overlooked Piaffe. But what if the artist's parent is also a tyrant? Chances are things won't end well. As Ella acknowledges late in the game, "I'm scared of what will happen if I carry on. And scared of what will happen if I don't."
Nonetheless, moments of normalcy flicker into life, most instigated by the kind, if slightly thick Tom, even as Ella becomes dismissive and condescending to everyone except her new neighbor, a figure nearly as domineering as her mother but in a much less threatening form. It's as if Ella were taking on some of Suzanne's worst traits.
Not to give too much away, but she doesn't become Suzanne any more than Carrie becomes her tyrannical mother in Stephen King's novel or Brian De Palma's movie. She's both better and worse, stronger and weaker than the person who made her, and her life and her film eventually converge. Though it's possible it's all in her head, a coda suggests otherwise.
For all the ways Stopmotion reminded me of other films--films I quite like, mind you--like Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio and Prano Bailey-Bond's Censor, his first feature doesn't look or sound exactly like anyone else's. In addition to Nocturama DP Léo Hinstin's disorienting cinematography, which grows especially wiggy in a club sequence, composer Lola de la Mata's sound design incorporates haunting choral music with Gialloesque whistling, squeaky hinges, and other unsettling noises.
It can be hard to grow up as the child of an artist, not least when that artist attempts to create you in their image, while never allowing you to completely develop your own identity or pursue your own interests. They would prefer that you stretch their canvases, clean their paint brushes, or type their manuscripts, much like Gina James, who dutifully typed up all of her mother's New Yorker film reviews since Pauline Kael refused to do it herself (to be fair, Ms. James seems to have turned out just fine).
It can be handy for an artist to have full-time, unpaid help. It's also a great way to create a monster who will destroy everyone who enters their lair.
Stopmotion is now playing in Seattle at the Meridian. It comes to Shudder on May 31. Images from IFC Films via Collider (Aisling Franciosi), Samuel Dole/IFC Films/Shudder (Franciosi and Ella's creation), Flickering Myth (Franciosi and Tom York), and First Showing (poster image).
There ain't no kind of sexual healing that I would not, should not, or could not do
Said this right here
--Butthole Surfers,
"Moving to Florida" (1984)
Ethan Coen's solo narrative debut represents a return to the screwball comedies he and his older brother, Joel, made on and off, starting with 1987's Raising Arizona (I wouldn't describe their first feature, Blood Simple, as a comedy, though it certainly has comic elements). Ethan turned 33 that year; he's 69 now.
Times have changed a lot since then, and even if Drive-Away Dolls captures the feel of their previous work, it's unlikely that the brothers would have built a film around two hot-to-trot, twentysomething lesbians in the 1980s.
Granted, Margaret Qualley's twangy Texas transplant Jamie is more--way more--sexually expressive than her buttoned-down, drily amusing roommate Marian (Bad Education's Geraldine Viswanathan, an Australian actress of Indian and Swiss descent), but they're both on the make in their own unique ways. Just because they're both queer, and unconflicted about their sexual orientation doesn't mean they aren't very different people. It's a staple of comedies, romantic comedies especially, since time immemorial, though it's less true of Emma Seligman's 2023 lesbian comedy Bottoms, to which I'll be returning, because the two films share significant similarities.
If Marian needs Jamie to keep her staid, office-drone life interesting--even if she often finds her exasperating--Jamie needs Marian to keep her grounded. Marian hasn't dated anyone since a bad breakup a few years before, whereas Jamie is the love 'em and leave 'em type. Throughout the film, she's often pictured having enthusiastic sex with women she barely knows. These scenes are more graphic, though not what I would consider exploitative, than you might expect from a Coen joint.
If you've seen any of Qualley's work to date, including last year's S&M thriller Sanctuary, you'll know she has few qualms about nudity. Like her mother, Andie MacDowell, she divides her time between modeling and acting, and models tend to be more comfortable with nudity than actresses, in part because it's a requirement of the job--if not full nudity then states of undress that come close--and Qualley has several nude scenes in the film, while Viswanathan has none. It's also possible that the latter doesn't share her exhibitionist tendencies, but it doesn't matter; it fits their characters.
After introducing the Philadelphia-based lives of these longtime friends, Ethan plunks them on the road. Jamie comes up with the idea of driving a car to Florida to escape their cares. In her case, one of those cares includes her obnoxious ex, Sukie (Lady Bird's Beanie Feldstein, who has been out since at least 2019). She shares her excitable nature, except hers is of the more pessimistic kind. She's also extremely bitter about their breakup.
Upon working out an arrangement with surly drive-away car coordinator Curlie (played amusingly by Bill Camp), the road trip begins.
Unbeknownst to the women, there's cargo in the trunk that the Chief (Rustin Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) has tasked his goons, Arliss (a bald Joey Slotnik) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), with delivering to Tallahassee, except Jamie and Marian beat them to the vehicle, and Curlie doesn't know about the cargo--a hyper-violent prologue with Pedro Pascal represents our introduction to a mysterious suitcase that recalls the mysterious suitcases of noir and noir-adjacent predecessors from Kiss Me Deadly to Pulp Fiction.
Jamie and Marian accept Curlie's assignment to deliver the car to Florida in 24 hours, except the former is chronically allergic to commitment, and side trips ensue to seedy motels, lesbian bars, and an afterparty with a women's soccer team where she hooks up with willing players, while Marian, for the most part, bides her time with a book--Henry James's comic novella The Europeans, to be precise. If the goons are bumbling idiots, the Chief shares her interest in classic literature. In his case: James's The Golden Bowl.
Whether Ethan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, editor and producer Tricia Cooke (The Big Lebowski), intends any significance by these novels--The Europeans revolves around a visit by two siblings to New England--I couldn't say, but it isn't uncharacteristic for a Coen film to feature a literate or urbane bad guy...even if they're also a coldblooded killer.
The director makes sure we know how much danger the Chief and his gun-toting minions represent through the torture they order or inflict on Curlie and Pascal's Collector. If the violence is intense, it's so over-the-top--in a Tex Avery meets Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner way--that I was more amused than offended. In an unusual coincidence, Bottoms revolves around a high school fight club founded by two hot-to-trot teen lesbians desperate to lose their virginity. That film is predicated on violence. Unlike this one, however, it's not especially sexy, which is weird because it's essentially a teen sex comedy. Better than Bob Clark's infamous Porky's to be sure, but surprisingly timid when it comes to sex. Much like Drive-Away Dolls, though, game performances from Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri save the day.
Naturally, everyone left standing in Drive-Away Dolls ends up in Tallahassee--including Matt Damon's conservative senator, who also covets the suitcase--and it's what I would both hope and expect from a screwball comedy/crime caper. If I have a problem with the film, and I do, it's that the screenplay could've used another pass. Too many lines that were clearly intended to be funny land with a thud, despite the cast's best efforts, but it's a minor complaint, because it's a fast-moving film that even makes time for leisurely interludes, some featuring Miley Cyrus as a plaster caster, that recall Jeremy Blake's painterly interludes for P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, but rendered in a more psychedelic sixties--if digitally-constructed--manner.
Another problem: the way Ethan keeps reminding us that these women are lesbians. And that they're horny. We know. We really know. Bottoms used the same playbook, even as its maker is a 28-year-old queer woman who grew up in a more enlightened era. I wouldn't say that Ethan, who has been married to Cooke since 1990, is revealing any prejudices through these single-minded portrayals, though; it's probably just meant to be funny.
I suspect that he and Cooke genuinely like these characters. To quote Ethan in a recent interview with the AP, "Tricia's queer and sweet and I'm straight and stupid. That could be the slogan of the movie: 'Straight and stupid.' Me and Joel couldn't do that because we're both straight and stupid." Fair enough, but it's still possible for a lesbian to have interests other than being a lesbian (and reading one book).
Then again, the portrayals of lesbians on screen, especially prior to Rose Troche's 1994 rom-com Go Fish, which they have cited as an inspiration, didn't used to be quite so freewheeling, so I get that we've reached the stage of queer representation in which coming out to friends and family, struggling with homophobic relatives and discriminatory authority figures, and other indignities can be considered things of the cinematic past.
The soundtrack, assembled by music supervisor Tiffany Anders, provides a definitive high point. Anders, the daughter of Allison Anders--who nearly made the film as Drive-Away Dykes in 2002--served as music supervisor for Reservation Dogs and Beef, and she's very good at what she does. If you're fond of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain," you'll be in seventh heaven since guitarist Eddie Hazel's otherworldly opus plays throughout each interlude. If you're not, you may tire of it quickly. It's also possible you're insane.
If I didn't love Drive-Away Dolls as much I expected to once I first watched the trailer--prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes it was slated for 2023--I definitely had a good time. In every way, it's the exact opposite of Joel Coen's black-and-white directorial debut, The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and his wife, Frances McDormand, which I loved (believe me, it helps to see it on the big screen; I'm not convinced that epic Apple films like Macbeth and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon benefit from streaming, though it seems likely to have expanded their audiences).
I'm not interested in taking sides either. If I prefer Macbeth to Drive-AwayDolls, it's due primarily to personal preference, since they don't have much in common. The former is more serious and more artfully shot (by Inside Llewyn Davis's Bruno Delbonnel), but if anything, we're as lucky to get to enjoy the Coen Brothers together as separately, in which they reveal strikingly different, yet equally appealing sides of their personas. As long as they continue making the films they want to make: I'll be watching them.
Ethan Coen's true solo directorial (not narrative) debut was 2022's Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. Drive-Away Dolls opens at the Meridian, Pacific Place, AMC 10, and other area theaters on Fri, Feb 23. Images from the IMDb (Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley), Patti Perret/Orion Pictures/TNS via The Lantern (Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Senott in Bottoms), Screen Rant (Beanie Feldstein), Frameline (T.J. Wilson, Colman Domingo, and Joey Slotnik), and Wikipedia (Funkadelic's 1971 Maggot Brain).
"I'll make tonight so funky, even the white boys will shake a leg."--Chris (Valentine Nonyela)
Isaac Julien's sole narrative feature, Young Soul Rebels, uses the form of a murder mystery to explore what it meant to be Black and queer/queer-friendly during London's punk era. Though the genre was associated with young people, like pirate radio disc jockeys Chris (Valentine Nonyela) and Caz (Mo Sesay), its most prominent practitioners, like the Sex Pistols, were white and straight. As the title attests, Chris and Caz, both men of color, prefer soul, but the spirit of punk infuses their DIY approach to music promotion--and life.
There's no guarantee that a film that opens with a great song will live up to it, but it's something that always puts me at ease. Set during June 1977, the film opens with Parliament's "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" before segueing into X-Ray Spex's "Identity," and instantly, I felt I was in good hands--even if I was a little irked that Julien didn't let the P-Funk number play out in its entirety (to be fair, it's over seven minutes long). From there, he segues into Chris's patter during "Soul Patrol," making it clear that the soundtrack's diegetic selections come primarily from the duo's radio show.
That same year, X-Ray Spex, a punk band led by a woman of color when that wasn't the norm, released their debut, Germfree Adolescents (Julien also includes "Oh, Bondage! Up Yours" and Funkadelic's "One Nation Under a Groove"). At the time, the country was celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee, as acidly immortalized by the 'Pistols on the single "God Save the Queen" and in Derek Jarman's Jubilee, which featured the all-female, take-no-prisoners Slits. One part of the country was the same as it ever was, and the other--Black, queer, anti-corporate, and/or underemployed--felt disenfranchised and excluded. What had the Queen ever done for them?
The film proper begins with Chris and Caz's friend TJ, also Black, carrying a boombox playing a recording of an episode of "Soul Patrol."
He enters a cruiser's park at night where he meets a leather-clad white man, face unseen, who comes on to him (at that point, TJ presses "record" on his player). At first things seem okay, and then they're not when the man attacks him, grabs his boombox, and runs away. Unintentionally or otherwise, the sequence recalls William Friedkin's 1980 Cruising, not least because the leather man will reappear later.
TJ doesn't survive the attack, and Chris and Caz are devastated, not least because the same thing could have happened to Caz, who is gay. However unsteadily, life goes on. Chris longs to go legit. Radio shows and club nights are fun, but he wants to make the move to commercial radio, so he uses his chutzpah to charm DJ Jeff Kane (Ray Shell, an American actor/musician who has performed with Magazine and appears in The Apple), a soul DJ at the BBC-like Metropolitan, and his associate, Tracy (vibrant then-newcomer Sophie Okonedo, most recently of Slow Horses), a production assistant.
Though the cops investigate the murder, they do so with minimal efficiency and maximum disrespect as they ask Chris, Caz, and the friends at the garage from which they broadcast their show, including Carlton (future Oz star Eamonn Walker), questions about TJ. Not all of these young men are gay--and the garage workers prefer reggae--but all are Black. Many are also of West Indian descent and the accents, combined with the retro London slang, run hot and heavy. (Early on, I enabled closed captioning, because I didn't want to miss a word.) If you caught 1980's Babylon or Steve McQueen's 2020 Windrush anthology Small Axe, you'll feel right at home.
Despite the fact that a homophobic murderer is on the loose and that the National Front is on the rise--as exemplified by the skinheads skulking around the council flats with their old man suspenders and Doc Martens--this isn't a grim picture. The soundtrack of bangers keeps it bumping--other acts include the Blackbyrds, Roy Ayers, the Heptones, Sylvester, Junior Murvin, and the O'Jays--but so do the moments of unadulterated joy, like Chris dressing up for a night on the town or teaching his younger sister and her friends dance moves, and Chris and Caz playing funk sides for a receptive crowd. That last sequence reminded me of the Lover's Rock section of Small Axe as the music melts everyone's cares away, at least for one night.
While Chris cozies up to Tracy for business and pleasure, Caz connects with the socialist-leaning, Melvillesque-named Billibud (Jason Durr), a white, leather-clad punk he meets at one of their club nights. The two men even reconnect in the same park where TJ met his maker. Could Billibud be the killer? Or is it Ken (Dorian Healy), the white, anorak-clad automobile enthusiast who hangs around the garage? We never see him in leather, but there's something off about the guy. Meanwhile, Julien uses POV shots to make it clear that someone is keeping an eye on both Chris and Caz.
Though Julien set Young Soul Rebels in the 1970s, Chris soon finds himself grappling with a very 1990s conundrum: selling out. With Tracy's pull, he has a shot at a steady paycheck, but only if he whitens up his act. He doesn't want success on those terms; he just wants to be himself and to get his own place. Caz, meanwhile, wants things to continue as they are.
Things start to go very wrong right around the time Chris finds the recording of TJ's attack. From the start, Julien suggests that the man watching the duo might even be one of the cops who hassled them at the garage. Though not every white person in the film is terrible, every cop is a racist asshole, and it's hard to imagine that they'll do the right thing if they get their hands on the tape.
Everything comes to a head at an anti-Jubilee gathering in the park attended by energetic punks, aggressive skinheads, and a smattering of Black youth, like Tracy and Chris and Caz, who are on the outs by that point--though true soul brothers can only stay mad at each other for so long.
If Julien eventually identifies TJ's murderer, the mystery framework proves the film's least successful aspect, more so in awkward execution than noble intent, but it's a savvy move to use genre trappings to explore a subculture, and in the end, music saves Chris and Caz as surely as it brought them together in the first place. The cops, the skinheads, the royalists, and all the other bad stuff remains bad, but they still have each other, and the final sequence suggests that they aren't as alone as they once were.
When Roger Ebert reviewed the film for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1991, he gave it a measly two stars, but when Peter Bradshaw reviewed Strand Releasing's new 4K reissue for The Guardian in 2023, he gave it four. I believe the latter hits closer to the mark.
In addition to Young Soul Rebels, Isaac Julien, MBE, is a documentarian (Looking for Langston, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask), installation artist, film professor, and founder of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective. For all his prestigious accolades, his sole narrative feature proves that he also knew--and presumably still knows--how to have a good time, even when telling a heartfelt story rooted in identity politics and intersectionality.
That playful side of his persona also factors into Jane Giles and Ali Caterall's SCALA!!!, a boisterous documentary about the infamous, all-night King's Cross movie palace that taught Black, queer, and otherwise outsider musicians, actors, and filmmakers, like Isaac Julien and Steve McQueen, that there was a place for them in the United Kingdom. After making the festival rounds in 2023, it should, much like this revival of Young Soul Rebels, be coming to US theaters and/or streaming services later this year.
If you hear any noise
It's just me and the boys.
--Bernie Worrell, George Clinton, and Bootsy Collins
Young Soul Rebels plays Northwest Film Forum Feb 14 - 21. Images from Rotten Tomatoes (Valentine Nonyela and Mo Sesay), BlogTO (Mo Sesay and Jason Durr), Out Film CT (Nonyela, Eamonn Walker, and Gary McDonald), and BFI (Nonyela and Sophie Okonedo and Julien on the set).
Coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and year-round art house programming in the Pacific Northwest.
Kathy Fennessy is President of the Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
