PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is the stunning debut feature from actor-writer-director Emerald Fennell. It's the darkest of dark comedy thrillers that impresses with how it manages to handle the nastiest of subject matter, to genuinely thrill, move and entertain. To direct something that manages such swift changes in tone and mood, but never felt jarring or out of control, is a skill and feat that has beaten many more seasoned directors. I simply cannot wait to see what Fennell does next, whether reprising her role as Camilla Parker-Bowles in the THE CROWN or creating her next movie.

The film casts Carey Mulligan against type (see review for the awful THE DIG) as a very smart but deeply damaged thirty year old woman who seeks revenge on the cohort of "nice guys" who think nothing of taking drunk girls home from bars and raping them. To do so, Cassie goes to bars, pretends to be drunk, waits for the inevitable to happen and then shocks her victims with her stone cold sober retribution.  Just what the nature of that retribution is, and the reason for Cassie's rage, are withheld for the first half of the film, creating a brilliantly intriguing and disturbing tension.  This is especially acute when Cassie's revenge moves beyond men to the women who have internalised misogyny and slut-shaming and enable the crimes to go hidden and covered up and the institutions (universities, psychiatry) that further victimise women. I genuinely gasped when Cassie involved the daughter of one of her targets in her deceptions and the idea that our hero-protagonist might actually be more evil than her targets was a nasty but brilliant tease.

What really impresses is how credible all of this is - from Cassie's trauma to the arse-covering excuses given to her by all involved (not least a great performance from Alison Brie as the most smug of middle class mothers who has a come to jesus moment). I really felt for these characters - not just Cassie, but even people like Alfred Molina's guilt-ridden psychiatrist. It's really testament to Emerald Fennell's direction that the film moves you even as it uses garish almost cartoonish visuals and music. I loved the chintzy overbearing interiors of Cassie's childhood home and the pop-coloured coffee shop run by her wonderfully sympathetic boss (Laverne Cox). I also loved the visual imagery that often sees Cassie depicted with angelic wings even as she does pretty nasty things. And the fact that the script is willing to go to an ending that is fittingly dark.  

Honestly, I cannot think of a single thing I didn't like about this film. Like it's heroine, it's smart and dark and thrilling, and it speaks to issues that need urgent attention. Kudos to all involved. 

YOUNG WOMAN has a rating of R and a running time of 113 minutes. The film played Sundance 2020 and was released on streaming services in January 2021.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is the delightful sequel to the charming 2012 kids animated movie.  It brings together most of the creative and voice team of the original for a story that feels organic in its progression.  In the first film, Dracula (Adam Sandler) struggled to accept that his beloved daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) had fallen in love with a human interloper (Andy Samberg) in his monster hotel.  In the sequel, the kids have gotten married and Drac is a grandpa to cute little Dennis. Problem is, Dennis doesn't appear to be a monster at all.  And so, a concerned Mavis wants to take him to live in the human world, much to Drac and his son-in-law's horror.

For much of the movie we see Drac take the kid on a road-trip to discover his inner monster, with laughably negligible impact. Turns out the monsters aren't really that monstrous anymore, partly through old age, and just plain old assimilation.  Pretty soon, Drac comes to believe that Mavis is right.  But at a last hurrah birthday party for Dennis, Drac's father Vlad (a brilliant cameo by Mel Brooks) comes to town. This infamously hard-ball monster is aghast that his son-in-law is human, just as the human grandparents are happy the kid is "normal".  

There's lots of social commentary in here about the difficulty of being accepted as a mixed-race or non-straight kid.  The difference between tolerating something and truly accepting it.  The difficulty of being understood by both sides and the pressure to please parents and grandparents.  And that's to be applauded. But aside from all that, the movie really works at the level of great animation, and superb imaginative comedy. The scenes of vampire bat flight are beautifully animated, and there are some lovely throw-away visual jokes (such as Drac giving the Invisible Man a purple nurple). Finally, what I love in this movie, as in the original, is its heart.  This is just a straightforwardly joyously warm-hearted movie that makes you want to hug your family and embrace glorious diversity.  Kudos to all involved.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 has a running time of 89 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie is on global release.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is, like PARANORMAN, an absolutely lovely, beautifully drawn, heart-warming children's animation film that pays homage to horror film history.  Adam Sandler plays Count Dracula, so scarred my the peasant mob killing his beloved wife, that he turns his castle into a hotel for ghouls and monsters to protect them from the nasty humans in the outside world. His extreme protection irks his teenage daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and when she meets a stray backpacker called Jonathan (Andy Samberg) the Count is torn between protecting his daughter from the outside world, and protecting the backpacker from the monsters at the hotel.  So ensues some wonderful comedy, with the Count loosening up under Jonathan's influence, and Mavis tentatively entering her first romance.  Ultimately, the movie plays a request for tolerance but it moves us because of its loving rendering of a father-daughter relationship.  As an out and out daddy's girl myself, I fell in love with it.  Kudos to director Genndy Tartakovsky (DEXTER'S LABORATORY) for his gonzo animation style, raucous sense of humour and genuine heart.  This is simply an adorable film.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA played Toronto 2012 and is on release in Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, the USA, Japan, Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ireland and the UK. It opens on October 18th in the Czech Republic, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden; on October 25th in Germany, Kuwait, Ukraine and Spain; on November 2nd in Iceland; on November 8th in Denmark, Italy and Poland; on November 19th in Vietnam; on November 23rd in Finland, Indonesia, Macedonia and Turkey; on December 5th in Thailand, Greece, Singapore and India; on December 19th in Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal; on  January 7th in Hong Kong and Taiwan and on February 13th in France. 

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA has a running time of 91 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.

IGOR - bizarrely pitched

IGOR is a kids animated film that subverts the Frankenstein legend. Igor is a humble hunchback who dreams of breaking through the class ceiling and becoming a bona fide Evil Scientist. To do this, he creates a monster that he'll enter in the annual Evil Science Fair (!) But Igor has three problems. First, his monster isn't an mass-murderer but an aspiring actress, who just wants to sing songs of joy and hope. Second, he's not actually that evil. In fact, he's a sweetie and he's falling for his monster. Third, evil Dr Schadenfreude wants to steal Igor's monster and win the science fair himself.

The movie is quite bizarre. I'm not sure how young kids are going to react to a movie populated with patchwork beasties rather than cute bunnies. Or a movie where the humour is aimed far more at adults than kids - knowing pop-culture references rather than prat-falls. And IGOR isn't even going for the sort of adult humour that drives a movie like SHREK. Rather, it's going for the sort of arrested development geeks (myself included) that love watching movies like BRAIN DEAD or YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or Tim Burton's animation. To that end, while I had a nice time watching IGOR I'm not sure if it really works as a kids flick. But if you like John Cusack and Steve Buscemi and loved the combination of ghouls and Harry Belafonte in BEETLEJUICE, this movie could be for you.

IGOR is currently on release in the USA, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, Greece and the UK. It opens in Iceland on October 31st. It opens in December in Russia, France and Portugal and in Argentina on January 1st.

YEAR OF THE DOG - neither romantic nor funny

Peggy (Molly Shannon) is a lonely middle-aged woman. Her sister-in-law (Laura Dern) is smug and self-centred; her boss is materialistic and selfish; her best-friend (Regina King) is callous and deluded. So Peggy finds solace in her relationship with her dog, Pencil. When he dies she transfers her attention to a similarly psychologically stunted dog-trainer called Newt (Peter Sarsgaard). Rejected once again, Peggy has what can only be described as a nervous breakdown.

This is not the stuff of romance nor comedy, and I was astounded at just what a relentlessly depressing film this was. From the trailer, one might have thought this would be another indie rom-com about quirky characters finding love, EAGLE VERSUS SHARK stylee. Instead, this is simply a long-drawn out tragedy in which a potentially normal woman throws away her life. To that extent, it reminded me of Mike White's previous script, THE GOOD GIRL, which left me similarly ambivalent about the central character and similarly depressed, despite the odd witty one-liner. Definitely one to avoid.

YEAR OF THE DOG played Sundance 2007 and was released in the US in April. It is currently on release in the UK.