'Speak No Evil' thrives on anxiety

 The first thing to know about the horror film Speak No Evil is that it’s a remake of a nasty 2022 Danish thriller directed by Christian Tafdrup. The second thing: Writer/director James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Eden Lake) softens the film’s edges while sustaining the heightened level of discomfort such pictures need.

 James McAvoy provides the film’s major performance as the brash, intimidating Paddy, owner of a remote British farm where he and his wife (Aisling Franciosi) are raising their young son (Dan Hough), a kid, whom we’re told, can’t speak because of a congenital defect that affected his tongue.

  The movie opens with a scenic Italian vacation during which Paddy and his wife befriend an American couple (Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis) who's  traveling with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). 

  A troubled marriage between McNairy's Ben and Davis' Louise and the anxieties of a 12-year-old daughter who’s about to leave childhood, give the story a bit of psychological texture.

  You’d have to never have seen a movie to miss the signs that Paddy and his wife are hiding menace behind facades of amiability.

   Watkins delivers numerous forebodings. That's part of the point. We know what's happening, but, for reasons that eventually become clear, Ben and Louise ignore or minimize obvious warnings.

   Watkins adds a woman-power spin, showcasing Louise’s increasing assertiveness in the face of Ben’s chronic ineffectuality. But it's McAvoy who revs the movie's engine: He takes a big bite out of his role, loading up on gleefully expressed aggression.

    Both young actors are good, and McNairy and Davis, who worked together on TV's Halt and Catch Fire, hit the right notes.

    At various points, the screenplay demands healthy suspensions of disbelief, and the ending probably will disappoint fans of the original, which offered a different kind of shock. Otherwise, Speak No Evil builds enough suspense and anxiety to support McAvoy’s performance as the screen’s latest charismatic lunatic.

An old friendship hits the road

 

   Will & Harper, a chronicle of a 16-day cross-country road trip made by Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, deals with two old friends adjusting to a challenging new development in their lives. In 2022, Steele came out as a transgender woman.

   Previously, Steele had been Andrew Steele; he and Ferrell had been friends since 1995 when they met as new members of the Saturday Night Live family. Steele wrote for SNL and championed Ferrell, who didn't immediately fit the SNL mold.

    After reading an email in which Harper, who has two children from a now-dissolved marriage, discussed his identity as a transgender woman, Ferrell thought a cross-country trip might be in order. The two travelers would determine how they might continue to relate to each other.

   For Steele, the trip also became a test run for a shifting persona, a chance to be seen in public in the kind of places she frequented as Andrew. While traveling solo across the country, Andrew indulged his fondness for dive bars, places not usually associated with gender diversity. 

   Could Harper bring a truck-stop sensibility to her  transgender evolution?

   Inevitably episodic, Will & Harper includes poignant and revealing moments. Ferrell approaches his friend with sincerity, and Steele responds in kind. The two share memories and laughs, as they navigate waters that aren't always comfortable. 

   Harper talks about the despair she felt prior to transitioning, but she approaches some of Ferrell’s questions with openness and good humor.

Her boobs? She says she loves them.

   At one point, Ferrell and Steele -- both sports fans -- attend an Indiana Pacers' game where they encounter Republican Governor Eric Holcomb, who's cordial even though he'd just signed legislation imposing restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors.  

    After the meeting, Ferrell learned about the ban. Oops.

    During a later stop, Steele and Ferrell visit an Oklahoma bar sporting a confederate flag and an impolite anti-Biden sign. Steele enters first; the bar’s patrons become friendlier once Ferrell makes his entrance. I guess celebrity presence opens doors.

     Steele talks about his masculine face and voice, and tries to learn new rules of the road. As a transgender woman, it might be ill-advised for Harper to walk alone down alleys, something Andrew might have done without giving it much thought. Such gender-related recalibrations add another layer of interest.   

   Director Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) offers a goofy scene in an upscale Las Vegas restaurant that seems overly contrived, and in a trip that can't entirely avoid road fatigue, not every observation proves fascinating.

   But Ferrell and Harper risk a level of exposure that many would avoid, and the movie ultimately tells a story about an enduring friendship. Without calling attention to the fact that Ferrell and Steele are accompanied by a film crew, Will & Harper serves as a testament to a shared history that both want to preserve, even in the face of radical change.*

*Now in select theaters, Will & Harper begins streaming on Netflix on Sept. 27.

After a long rest, Beetlejuice returns

  It’s easy to see why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton’s follow-up to the 1988 classic, opened the 2024 Venice Film Festival. By the end of its high-spirited one hour and 32 minutes, the film has established itself as a celebration of the original. 

   Some might call that fan service, but I prefer to say that Burton, who’s now 66, treats Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more as a belated encore than a sequel.

  I'm leaping ahead but, for me, the best thing about the movie arrived at the end. A finale built around Donna Summer’s rendition of MacArthur Park — lip-synched by two of the film’s characters — gives Burton's second helping a near lyrical lift, a small triumph of silliness.

    Generally, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice provides intermittent amusement built around a few veterans of the original cast, most notably Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, the scuzzy demonic dead guy with a wiseass show business flare and an uncontrolled libido.

    Other returnees include Catherine O’Hara as the narcissistic self-proclaimed artist Delia, who’s also stepmother to Lydia Deetz, the returning Winona Ryder. Once a sullen teenager, Lydia is now the widowed mother of Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega), this edition’s skeptical teen. 

    As if to goof on the monetization of horror, the screenplay makes Lydia the host of a popular TV show called Ghost House, which purportedly investigates hauntings. Justin Theroux serves as the host’s producer, a self-aggrandizing sleaze ball who wants to marry Lydia. 

    The joke fizzles. Theroux’s Rory is so obviously phony that his sincerity becomes a one-note gag.

    The plot consists of a variety of contrivances that connect the movie’s set pieces and introduce new characters such as Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, a TV actor whose afterlife existence consists of acting out tough cop roles. 

   Monica Bellucci plays Delores, a soul-sucking corpse who reassembles her severed body parts with the help of a staple gun. Delores once was married to Beetlejuice and now seeks vengeance for no better reason than he chopped her into little pieces. It's an old story; some people can't take a joke.

    Arthur Conti appears as Jeremy, a young man who seems to connect with Astrid until the movie adds a dark twist.

      The 1988 original -- which I saw in a long-gone theater in a long-gone mall -- certified Burton as a director to watch. Beetlejuice felt like a breakthrough, an outrageously inventive second film from the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. 

       In the new edition, Burton smooths out rough edges with an animated sequence about the death of Lydia’s father, a healthy application of gook, and the addition of Beetlejuice’s mini-spawn, a flesh-chomping baby. A brigade-sized horde of ghosts in large suits sport heads that have been shrunk to the size of grapefruits. 

       Don't look for Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, the original ghosts. Their characters have moved on in their afterlife journeys.

       It's hardly surprising that the feeling of discovery has waned, but there’s still some fun left in a movie with a plot that can feel as stitched together as Bellucci’s Delores.    

       Besides, with Keaton fully embracing Beetlejuice’s slimy ways, Burton finds enough comic life among the dead to keep his movie from foundering.

       

  

On saving a beloved attraction

 

    For some folks who were raised in the Denver area, the restaurant Casa Bonita evokes fond memories of childhood. Once called the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants, Casa Bonita opened in 1974 and quickly became the star attraction of a Lakewood, Co., strip mall.

   Among those smitten by Casa Bonita were Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. The restaurant appeared in a South Park episode, a touch of nostalgia garnished with the series' satirical hot sauce.

  In 2021, Parker and Stone purchased the dying restaurant  for $3.1 million. They then embarked on a restoration project that wound up costing $40 million, a major leap from an initial estimate of $6 million.

  Casa Bonita Mi Amor! documents the restaurant's history while providing a lively and entertaining chronicle of what initially looks like one of history's worst investments. 

   More guided by passion than spreadsheets, the South Park creators stuck with their venture, reopening the restaurant in 2023. They brought back a 30-foot indoor waterfall and restored other signature attractions that make the current version seem less like Disneyland than something on the order of Meow Wolf with Mexican food.

   It wasn't easy. The restaurant Parker and Stone purchased might be likened to a corpse left to fester in the desert sun. Pipes oozed ... well ... ooze, and the building's infrastructure was so deteriorated, it had become gross and dangerous.

    Anyone who has ever been caught in a cycle of escalating costs during a home renovation project will recognize the problems Parker and Stone faced. At one point, they wondered whether it might be wise to pull the plug and cut their losses. 

    Like most possessed people, they proceeded with their outlandish pursuit of resurrecting the past while giving it contemporary polish and a new infusion of imagination.

    Was it insane? Probably, but director Arthur Bradford understands the passion, commitment, and, yes, love, necessary to achieve a cockeyed goal.

     Casa Bonita Mi Amor! put me in mind of collectors who remain undeterred by the oddity of their quests. I once met a woman who prided herself on her collection of doors. (Don't ask about storage.) 

      A large dose of idiosyncratic passion explains why Parker and Stone's nostalgia trip was more inspired by Elvis's 1963 movie, Fun in Acapulco, than anything that might be called authentically Mexican. To yearn for Casa Bonita, at least as it was during its heyday in the 1970s and '80s, meant reveling in a collection of unashamed kitsch.

   To me, there's something irresistible about folks who pursue eccentric ventures; Casa Bonita Mi Amor! thrives on the contagious fondness for the place displayed by Parker, really our guide through the story.

   Casa Bonita wasn't known for haute cuisine, but Parker and Stone hired Dana Rodriguez, a multiple James Beard award nominee, as the restaurant's executive chef. I've read mixed things about the food since the restaurant's opening.

  But food was never the entire focus: The Casa Bonita experience created ardent devotees, including Stone and Parker, two exceptionally creative guys who refused to let the embers of childhood delight smolder. 

   Parker and Stone indulged a heartfelt belief that some dreams don't deserve to die -- no matter how crazy they might seem or maybe because they are too crazy to abandon.

The abused kids of Sugarcane Reserve

Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie direct the quietly compelling Sugarcane, a documentary that exposes the horrific treatment of children from the Sugarcane Reserve in Canada. The directors deal with the consequences of a Canadian government policy that in the late 1800s established some 139 boarding schools run by the Catholic Church. Thousands of indigenous children found themselves in these schools, which resulted in separation from family and culture, physical and sexual abuse, and, in some cases, suicide. In part, the directors focus on NoiseCat's father, who was a "student" at the St. Joseph's school, which was founded in 1886 and housed children from the Williams Lake First Nation people. The most shocking detail: the incineration of babies born to female students who were sexually abused by priests. Yes, you read that right. Incineration. Although the account sometimes becomes muddled, significant details remain clear and the emotional impact of the various stories is undeniable. One of the film's principal interviewees, for example, learns that his father may have been a priest at the school.  A visit made by some of the Sugarcane Reserve people to Rome resulted in a meeting with Pope Francis. No apology was forthcoming.  But, then, the past can't be undone and apologies, though essential, can’t address the wrongs committed by the church and the Canadian government. Previously ignored mistreatment of children set off an inquiry which the film tells us uncovered 159 burial sites at St. Joseph's. Although the school was closed in 1981, the emotional scars of abuse and neglect continue in the present, and that makes Sugarcane an ongoing and essential story.