There’s just too much quality cinema out there, and the thought that it might slip through the city’s collective fingers is one of the many social and societal phenomena that keep me awake at night. So here’s a quintet of awesome works of art at your local theater (or on your cable/streaming setup, in one instance) — all of these films utterly rule (just in different ways) and each can help soothe the unease of The Now in the way that Art of Big Emotions can do.
Mother Mary
Mother Mary
You don’t necessarily expect the artsy horror musical to provide an exegesis on the way that artistic collaboration evolves and resolves. Some would say that’s a space for documentary cinema to step up, letting subtext be text and hammering out the specifics of the Who and the What and How it all shook out in the wash. But in addition to being the latest child of Vox Lux in diagnosing modern pop stardom, Mother Mary is about how emotional beef is like a possession, and as the titular star, Anne Hathaway is serving magnetic desperation (including a dance sequence with no music that is absolutely electrifying), and it’s awesome.
In personal and professional crisis, she’s come to the manor/workshop of her estranged friend and costume designer, Sam (Michaela Coel, who is having a tremendous spring, what with this and The Christophers), to deal with a whole lot of issues. The energy is moody and electric, with incredible actresses actressing (see also FKA Twigs), the songs are superb (the Hathaway/Charli XCX/Jack Antonoff co-write “Holy Spirit” is flawless, in both incarnations), and while you may think you know exactly how a story like this is going to go, you really don’t. (See also Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, on Netflix.)
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
It’s rare when a major studio release finds a way to put you in a place of genuine terrified suspense as to whether they’re going to do something traumatizingly shocking. At several points in this languid freakout, you find yourself horrified by what you’re seeing, but even more so by what might could happen. For everyone online complaining about “who even is Lee Cronin,” that’s a name that you will remember because he’s not pulling punches or soft-pedaling the horror at the center of this vicious tale, as he’s done with his previous two features as well.
It’s a different perspective on mummy mythology (a little bit archaic pagan rite, a little bit the VHS cult in Bring Her Back) involving a family and an unspeakable curse, and you’ve got to respect any film that finds the commonalities in the horrors of Ancient Kemet as well as New Mexico. There’s a lot going on in the characterizations here, and like the 3D Billie Eilish film (see below), this is a film that aims to explore new vistas in visceral crawlspace experiences. Gross and gutsy (in multiple ways), this mummy wraps you up and hits hard.
Buffet Infinity (available via video on demand)
Imagine if you had to tell a complete story about the collapse of life as we know it on a cosmic scale, starting with gentrification and escalating all the way up to extradimensional invasion, but the required means of expressing it were local TV ads and fragments of news footage. Of a piece with conceptual horror collages like the WNUF Halloween Special and Out There Halloween Mega Tape, this has a grand, Lovecraftian scale (and a more balanced incorporation of humor) but also a completely different objective. Maybe you doubt the throughline between the Avery Family Sandwich Sauce and the Unblinking Stare of That Which Lurks Beyond, but you shouldn’t. Walking a tightrope between middle school sleepover chaos and grad school formalism, this is a mordantly dark gift that keeps on giving.
Hokum
Hokum
Damian McCarthy has a gift for defining those weird physical spaces where the messy parts of human affairs bump into something grand and often ghoulish; he’s the kind of filmmaker who could adapt V.C. Andrews and Fritz Leiber with equal aplomb. But with Hokum, his third feature, he’s doing just fine working from his own dark visions, serving up a subtle and visceral nightmare.
The great Adam Scott is a mildly acclaimed novelist plagued with visions and narratives, holing up in an Irish inn that holds his only truly happy family memory. But there’s always something about those environments that encompass the remote and the expansive at the same time — and Hokum digs at the horrors of the concrete and the abstract with methodical, bloody precision. And yes, scary lapins in abundance.
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard And Soft — The Tour Live in 3D (in theaters May 8)
Much like Ghosts of the Abyss or Aliens of the Deep, it turns out if you confine James Cameron to actual, real, physical space and things that have mass, he’s going to do things with 3D no one’s ever attempted. Working with superstar Eilish as co-director, point of inspiration and show designer (along with Tarik Mikou), Cameron has committed fully to bringing The Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour to life using 3D technology that is nimble, impressive, and at a couple of points, rivaling Godard’s Goodbye to Language in finding new things to do with stereoscopy. (The single-handed 3D camera she wields throughout the film is tech I’d love to get access to.) The show is fine-tuned, and the songs and performances are great. (The Barbie song destroyed me completely, and the rethinking of the Charli XCX duet “Guess” injected some ribald rave energy.) This is essential viewing for anyone who wants to trip out on visual possibility and groove accordingly.
