Thelma (2024)

I would usually be upset by an action movie that didn't have a decent amount of full-on action in it, but Thelma is an exception to the rule. It's a film that makes great use of some action movie tropes, delivering laughs and genuine tension throughout, and proves wholly satisfying, despite also making time and space for some moving commentary on the pros and cons of growing old.

June Squibb plays the title character, a 93-year-old woman who ends up giving thousands of dollars to a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger). Not only does this affect her finances, it starts a conversation about whether or not she is still able to live on her own. Determined to prove that she isn’t ready to be placed in a nursing home, Thelma embarks on a quest to retrieve her stolen money, reluctantly accepting the assistance of Ben (Richard Roundtree) on the way.

Written and directed by Josh Margolin, making his feature debut, this is a film full of unexpected delights. Whether it’s a chase sequence involving mobility scooters or a Mission: Impossible style mini-heist showing an elderly woman dealing with a carpeted set of stairs before trying to reach the top of a wardrobe, the juxtaposition of action movie elements with the advanced age of our main character makes for wonderful entertainment. The film manages to deliver much more than that one joke though (and it should be noted that the joke is about the genre standards, not about our main characters). What Margolin does with the messaging of the movie is intertwine it deftly in a way that makes it all very clear and obvious without it ever feeling unnecessary or unwelcome. The fun and the commentary are like two strands on a firmly bonded double helix.

It helps that Squibb is such a delight in the lead role. She may not completely convince as a badass, but she does enough to get by, and she absolutely convinces as someone unwilling to let her lifestyle be dictated by her advanced age. Her body may not always act in the way she wants it to, but her mind is almost as sharp as ever. Roundtree does very well alongside her, also struggling with his situation, albeit in a different way, and showing a vulnerability that is accompanied by his much less vulnerable essence of the macho man we've seen him play in films over many decades. Hechinger is very sweet and likeable as Daniel, Parker Posey and Clark Gregg are Thelma's daughter and son-in-law, respectively, and both spend a lot of the movie being very concerned about an old woman they seem to constantly underestimate, and there's a fantastic role for Malcolm McDowell by the time we get well into the third act.

As long as you know that this is going to be more Moderate & Agitated than Fast & Furious then you should find a lot to enjoy. It shouldn't really work as well as it does, I certainly didn't expect to sometimes be tensing up or to feel so satisfied as the final scenes played out, but Margolin shows that thrills and set-pieces don't need big budgets or global stakes. They just need to have the right character in the middle of everything, and that will guarantee that you will be seriously invested in how they navigate the perils around them.

8/10

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Beau Is Afraid (2023)

It is easy to see why some would despise Beau Is Afraid. Not only is it an indulgent and very odd film, it also has a vein of humour running throughout that many people won’t find funny.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, what you have here is essentially an anxiety nightmare that shows us the journey of the titular Beau (mainly played by Joaquin Phoenix) as he leaves his home to visit his mother. Whether that visit is a good idea or not . . . well, it’s nothing compared to the trip that Beau is taking through his own psyche. And you could easily argue that what we see is entirely within Beau’s psyche. Basically, feel free to read this review as coming from someone who is trying to keep all interpretations available to other people who have yet to experience the film.

Although I wasn’t as immediately impressed with Aster’s earlier works as many others were, he is impossible to dismiss due to his commitment to a particular brand of stylish visuals bolted to a sense of growing dread, helped along once again by a score from Bobby Klric AKA The Haxan Cloak. I loved Midsommar (despite it so unabashedly riffing on a legendary horror genre title) and I went into this with cautious optimism. Although very different from his previous film, this is a dark comedy that fits perfectly in his filmography. No surprise really, especially when you consider that it is an expansion of a short film he made years ago.

Phoenix is as superb as you would expect in the central role, always taking his anxiety and awkwardness as far as he can, and the film easily rests on his shoulders for most of the runtime. It’s not a solo show though, and he’s given great support from Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Patti LuPone and Zoe Lister-Jones (playing two incarnations of one character), Parker Posey, and, as a younger Beau, Armen Nahapetian. Picking out one highlight is impossible, and there are other notable names here that I am failing to mention, but everyone is pitch-perfect and in line with Aster’s vision, even as it stumbles from sharp humour to outright horror, and from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The best thing about the film, however, is the truth at the heart of it. There are laughs and scares here that many of us have experienced at least once in life, pulsating cysts that grew from unattended childhood wounds, and Aster successfully grounds those identifiable elements in a moving collage of guilt, remorse, and extreme self-loathing, the kind that makes you see your own reflection as a grotesque puppet hung from the strings of every one of your perceived inadequacies.

Much like the central character, this is hard to love. But much like a parent of a child I have irreparably damaged with my own projected angst and insecurities, I still managed to love it anyway. 

8/10

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Prime Time: The Eye (2008)

Although not from Japan, The Eye (2002) was one of many horror movies to be lumped in with the hits that were coming thick and fast in the J-horror boom at the start of the 21st century. It holds up as a superb horror movie, and it's a shame that the makers of it, the Pang brothers, didn't do anything else that came close to it.

The remake was probably inevitable, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept, especially with so many things wrong.

Jessica Alba stars as Sydney Wells, which is the first major error (more on that later). Sydney is a talented violinist, and she's blind. After undergoing a cornea transplant, Sidney has to get used to seeing the world around her, but it takes her a while to realise that she's not seeing the world the way that everyone else sees it. Much like a young Haley Joel Osment, she sees dead people. She sees so many of them, at times, that it's almost as if she's receiving an important message.

Okay, I may as well address my first complaint right here. I don't hate Jessica Alba, and I've enjoyed her in a number of roles, but she's not always the best choice for some of the lead roles that she's been given over the years, and I think her inclusion here just feels wrong. She's not convincing, whether playing the violin or reacting to the environment around her. Sadly, the rest of the cast don't do much better, which is more surprising when it comes to the likes of Alessandro Nivola (playing Dr. Paul Faulkner), Parker Posey (playing Sydney's sister, Helen), and Chloë Grace Moretz (playing a young hospital patient named Alicia).

The cast aren't helped by either the script, by Sebastian Gutierrez, or the direction, from David Moreau and Xavier Palud. None of these people manage to stick close to the atmosphere and style of the original, despite sometimes trying, which is a massive disappointment for those familiar with the 2002 film. Those seeing this story being told onscreen for the first time might be a bit easier to please, but even the most casual horror fan may start to feel that something is lacking. You get a number of jump scares, a load of messy CGI, and a third act that takes things in a direction that was not only done better the first time around, it was also done better in another fantastic 2002 horror movie (that I won't name, in order to avoid spoiling things for anyone).

It would be easy to go on and on about more of the things in this remake that irk me so much, and I do like a rant every now and again, but it's not really worth the time or energy. The Eye is simply a typical example of the laziest kind of remake. It's the kind of film we can all point to as an argument against remakes, despite the fact that there have been (thankfully) a number of modern remakes that have managed to get things very right.

3/10

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Mixed Nuts (1994)

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house . . . . . . . . . . . . the telephone was ringing and people feeling suicidal were calling for help.

Mixed Nuts is an inferior, but ultimately enjoyable, rom-com set on Christmas Eve in a crisis hotline office. The team are about to be evicted, but only Philip (Steve Martin) knows this. He's not wanting to break the bad news to the lovely, loyal Catherine (Rita Wilson) or the crabby and bitter Mrs. Munchnik (Madeline Kahn). While dealing with a variety of calls, the team ends up in the middle of a domestic between the heavily pregnant Gracie (Juliette Lewis) and her lovable loser of a boyfriend, Felix (Anthony LaPaglia).

This is very standard stuff, especially if you're familiar with the work of Nora Ephron (who both directed this movie and also co-wrote the screenplay with her sister, Delia - not an original piece, the two tweaked and reworked the script of Le Père Noël Est Une Ordure). It's also good fun for anyone who enjoys the featured cast members.

As well as those mentioned, Adam Sandler has a fun role (although he makes use of his standard annoying vocal style and also gets to sing some stupid lyrics), Liev Schreiber is wonderful as a transgender individual named Chris, Parker Posey and Jon Stewart have small roles and Garry Shandling gets to be entertainingly unpleasant for every minute of his limited screentime.

The script may not be the sharpest, and the direction may be a bit flat, but things are improved immeasurably by all of the leads. Martin is good fun, as is Wilson, but more laughs come from the scenes featuring Lewis and LaPaglia. The most laughs, however, come from any scenes featuring Madeline Kahn, easily reminding viewers of just what a great comedic actress she is. She's one of the best, and one of the major plus points of Mixed Nuts is the fact that it lets her steal every scene that she's in.

I doubt that anyone will list this as a favourite film, but there's enough here to make it a fairly enjoyable 90 minutes.

6/10

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