PAIN HUSTLERS Review

Between dramatized series' like Dopesick and Painkiller to last year's unanimously praised documentary All The Beauty And The Bloodshed the whole world of the pharmaceutical scam and opioid crisis in America has been well-documented over the last few years. Director David Yates seemed to be in luck despite this barrage of similarly-themed content though, as I've only seen the Nan Goldin doc meaning this fictionalized telling of Evan Hughes' 2018 investigative feature of the same name was essentially fresh territory for me. That said, it's unfortunate Pain Hustlers or the first feature from Yates that has not been authored by J.K. Rowling since 2014's Tarzan and the first non-IP film he's made since 2005 is something he only seems tangentially connected to. That is to say that Yates, a Brit through and through, might have had a vision for how to tell this story when he read Hughes' piece, but more he likely found this distinctly American story just that therefore implying the type of vision he then defaulted to.

That default is naturally Scorsese-light as Pain Hustlers echoes recent output like The Wolf of Wall Street and similar films that came along in its wake a la The Big Short, War Dogs, and most recently Dumb Money. Each of these films center around unqualified individuals stumbling into incredible (if not always legal) situations that garner them untold amounts of money who then have to balance their greed with their inexperience before getting caught. As a piece of entertainment this moves quickly and offers enough broad insight coupled with reaches for genuine emotion to track as something worthy of your time while being informative either as a whole or about certain aspects of this crisis not yet exposed. As a novice on the subject, I found the idea at its core - the exploitation of helping people for profit rather than the greater good - naturally compelling and the details of it fascinating which made me wonder why, by the close of the film, I had no real reaction to what I'd just experienced.

INFLUENCER Review

As vapid as the title might suggest this is, Influencer is actually one of the better (if not the best) horror/thriller I've seen this year. Like so many films these days this isn't necessarily presenting us anything new, but what it's doing it's doing at a really high level. I love a movie that's smarter than it knows you're going to assume it is based on exterior factors and Influencer almost certainly takes advantage of its Shudder distribution, no marquee cast, and derisive title as each contribute to a certain kind of trashy B-movie perception that makes the fact this is actually a smart, twisty take on the role of social media not just in our lives but in the world at large all the better as said commentary is much more astute than it is mocking; never losing itself in its sermon, but instead letting the character choices and tone speak for themselves.

Not only does director Kurtis David Harder (who also co-wrote the movie with Tesh Guttikonda) take advantage of the preconceived notions around his film though, but he then steps it up further to convince us we're watching something made with real intent and awareness of style (as well as some vast knowledge of the genre) by managing to have his film aesthetically look like the staged, phony world presented via Instagram while also coming off as a credible feature film with purpose. Further, (and this is when I really knew we were in good hands) Harder drops the title card for his film thirty minutes into the runtime. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but the placement within the story and the way it combines with the soundtrack to kind of deftly say to the audience, "Okay, let's really get going now..." not only enhances the pacing, but revives interest in where the narrative could possibly go given the end of the first act feels rather finite. The fact the very next scene follows the character I didn't expect us to stick with told me all I needed to know about what might happen over the next hour and that was that I didn't know anything at all.

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER Review

On the surface it would seem this latest incarnation of a familiar property was made both only for financial gain (or so they thought) and with the old-fashioned mindset that sequels must be bigger in order to be better. What is more frightening than one possessed girl? Two, right? Fortunately, this isn't exactly the line of thought eclectic (to say the least) writer/director David Gordon Green was following when making this decision. Rather, this decision is all about choice as choice is what informs the whole of this first in an intended trilogy of new Exorcist films.

Opening with an earthquake in Haiti that forces Leslie Odom Jr.'s character to choose between the survival of his wife and the life of his daughter, the film is keen to emphasize the role of our moral agency in this life and how seriously we take responsibility for our choices is just as important as the choices themselves. The way Green and co-writers Danny McBride, Scott Teems, and largely Peter Sattler weave this weight of responsibility and the constant questioning Odom's Victor Fielding has regarding the choices he's made and is confronted with making throughout the course of the film lend the otherwise familiar template of the exorcism movie some necessary weight, especially considering the lineage of William Friedkin's original.

While that original film saw both Jason Miller's Father Karras and Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil grappling with their faith in the face of this possession, Green and co. have smartly updated not only the location of the film from Washington, D.C. to Georgia, but also the role of church and faith in what I feel I can safely assume is presently a more secular America than in 1973. In doing so, we have Fielding who is or has become an absolute non-believer in the wake of his wife dying. Fielding's daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett), who is now thirteen and friends with Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) has a mother and father (Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz) who are very much ingrained in a community church and seem genuinely convicted in their beliefs (I lowkey kind of loved Nettles' performance in this as she lends a certain credibility to the southern protestant persona that is often easy to dismiss). When the girls disappear after school one day to secretly attempt to contact Angela's dead mother, they naturally conjure the unwanted spirits/demons that then begin to possess their bodies.

THE CREATOR Review

Visually absorbing if not thematically so. Though the ideas it's playing with and tropes it's utilizing may not be as shallow as they initially appear they tend to feel cursory due to the fact writer/director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Rogue One) never finds the right groove for his film to slide into. The Creator is ultimately a movie of fits and starts in which each new promise of something exciting and/or interesting never fully delivers on as much.

It's an odd feeling, really, given mere minutes into the film I was bowled over by the authenticity imbued on an image of a massive spacecraft hovering over a more natural (and clearly real) location. I'm a sucker for when films can integrate futuristic or not yet realized elements into a more common and recognizable environment and Edwards has a great eye for such combinations that really allow both components to pop, but while I was immediately in on the aesthetic I kept wondering when I was going to be made to care or even be wowed by anything other than the framing.

Aside from a few in-world inventions, performance moments (largely from Madeleine Yuna Voyles in a really wonderful and really complicated role for a child to play), along with some questionable story turns there wasn't anything that made me sit up in a way that I was inclined to lean forward. Rather, I kind of shifted my weight to the other armrest to consider why the film didn't seem interested in leaning into its ideas either. The mission is fairly straightforward, but the intentions are not...always. Weirdly, and despite admitting it was beings operating on artificial intelligence who nuked Los Angeles, The Creator is determined to convince us the only thing left of our souls are the fingerprints we left on the programming within the robots we're now at war with.

DUMB MONEY Review

A loud and frenetic character piece that doesn’t always give its large ensemble enough for viewers to really invest in (get it), but also delivers stock talk succinctly enough for the casual viewer to understand while kind of inherently hammering home its ideas around power, exclusivity, and the frustration that comes with not having access to the biggest motivating factor of human behavior.

Eclectic director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella) knows the script from Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo has a lot going on (maybe too much at times) but he and editor Kirk Baxter (a frequent Fincher collaborator) seem to have understood the assignment from the get-go as there is a certain tempo to the film’s tone that allows for the transitions from one set of characters to the next and from one scenario to another to all feel like part of the same conversation. Whether it’s Pete Davidson, a DoorDash driver, scolding his brother immaturely for not selling at $11 million or Seth Rogen, portraying billionaire Gabe Plotkin, yelling at someone about his tennis courts there is a keen sense of forward motion in the construction of the film that keeps things moving as well as entertaining to the point you don’t question what is lacking or consider what could have been; you’re too busy trying to keep up with all that is going on to catch your breath, but most importantly…you’re having a good time.

A true time stamp of a film, Dumb Money is a thing of such recent history it may feel almost irrelevant in this moment but will undoubtedly serve as a fascinating encapsulation of this very specific snapshot in time years down the road. Presently, the casting makes this a lot of fun - especially in regard to the big wigs taking big shots – but this is Dano’s show and while, as someone from the South, I can’t tell whether he’s doing a good Boston accent or not, the performance itself is super charming and wholly endearing. We’re meant to come out of this rooting for Keith Gill and you absolutely do (I haven’t been able to stop asking for “tendies” since I saw the film).