I spent most of the last six weeks watching Dracula movies to put together this list for Vulture but still managed to catch some new releases for this month’s movie diary. I’ll be traveling a bit next month and could use some suggestions for plane watches, so drop me a line about what you’ve just seen.
Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt (in theaters)
Kelly Reichardt’s latest is a sensitive portrait of an art school in the Pacific Northwest starring Michelle Williams as Lizzie, a ceramicist preparing for her upcoming show. Lizzie works at the same college as her mother, where she trades flyer-making for hours at the kiln. Reichardt has always had an immensely powerful gift for place and Showing Up is no exception. We see not just the geography of the college, which is rendered with a dreamy summer camp haze, but also the individual domiciles of Lizzie, her separated parents, her eccentric brother (Joe Magaro), and her neighbor/landlord/frenemy Jo (Hong Chau)—each home constructed as deliberately as their own artistic work.
In long shots of these houses and the student artists at work, we see how Lizzie’s maleducation has come together. She is a permanently surly, scowling, unfriendly faculty brat. In the first few moments, I thought this was someone suffering from artistic burnout—the familiar condition of working in the same field as your passion until the joy drains from any endeavor. But it seems clear that this is just Lizzie, still lingering in the afterglow of childhood angst. A compulsive leaver of passive-aggressive voicemails, her only interest is an artform that allows her to literally replicate her malformed femininity.
“Your brother,” (who leaves his home only to dig holes in the yard and suspects his neighbors have conspired to turn off reruns of the Twilight Show) “is a genius,” her mother (Maryann Plunkett) reminds her, and we see that Lizzie has grown sideways in the shadow of artistic hippie parents and their only son. She has remained a child, with her Kit Kittredge bob and matching pajama set, competing in a one-sided power struggle.
Lizzie’s disdain for her neighbor Jo is uncomfortably palpable, and though Jo is undoubtedly a terrible landlord, their sour relationship is not based in tenancy squabbles. It’s in Lizzie’s unhappiness with Jo’s artistic success, and more importantly in Jo’s success in her performance of carefree artishness. Jo is the breakout star of the art college, not Lizzie. She rebuilds in places where Lizzie only sees entropy—repurposing an old tire into a swing instead of replacing Lizzie's broken water heater, rescuing a pigeon attacked by Lizzie’s cat.
And yet Lizzie, who is friendless, hobby-less, and seemingly joyless, is less successful than Jo on every count. I think most of us have known several Lizzies and will unfortunately recognize her belief that to be good at something you have to be serious and unhappy, and subsequently suffocatingly anxious, her ethos that anything someone else has is undeserved because no one works as hard as her. It’s an uncommon depiction of bitter self-absorption and female mediocrity.
I generally like Williams but think she is just-fine here, with some of her choices feeling a little studied and obvious. Everyone else I really loved—Judd Hirsch as Lizzie’s unshorn father, André Benjamin as the lambent kiln-firer. Reichardt remains so obviously in a class of her own.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (in theaters)
Why isn’t this rated PG? This is a movie made for 9-year-olds who trace a longing finger over the crushed velvet gowns and polyester jerkins of the Party City Halloween costume catalog (no judgment). As I noticed in a previous issue, this joins 65 as a movie where a white Hollywood leading man has an unnamed Black wife and a mixed race daughter played by Chloe Coleman. May she live for 1000 years!
Return to Seoul, Davy Chou (in theaters)
A thrilling breakout performance from Ji-Min Park who plays Freddie, a French woman and adult adoptee from South Korea who finds herself unexpectedly in Seoul. Frighteningly unpredictable and frequently cruel, Freddie is at odds with the men who surround her and want to define her, including her birth father (a tortured Oh Kwang-rok) who desperately wants to provide the family life she never asked for.
John Wick: Chapter Four, Chad Stahelski (in theaters)
This might be the best of the series, and it’s leaps and bounds above the slog of Chapter Three. Legible even if you’re unfamiliar with the franchise, scarce on dialogue and lore, and embedded with a reasonable amount of references to previous movies, the new John Wick felt like an answer to my prayers.
Scream VI, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (in theaters, streaming on Paramount+)
I had low expectations because of how incompetent Scream (2022) was but Scream IV ended up being a little bit of fun. The absence of Neve Campbell and David Arquette is helpful in giving the movie some much needed breathing room, especially as the filmmakers’ interests clearly lie in deifying the de-aged specter of Billy Loomis. Scream ‘22 made it clear that there is no Sidney Prescott without Wes Craven, and including someone with Campbell’s chops would have only highlighted how bad some of the acting here is. The movie’s weak point continues to be in the protagonist of Sam Carpenter, a husk of a character played with utter lifelessness.
Cocaine Bear, Elizabeth Banks (in theaters, streaming on Peacock)
At least it was better than Dungeons and Dragons.
Okay, the poem "John Wick is so tired" and this post has made me very interested in finally dipping my toe in the JW universe BUT would you recommend watching 1&2 first or would it be K00L to just run (sit) headlong into 4?
I found this new Scream sooo baaaad, but I haven't enjoyed the franchise since Scream 2. Agree with you about utter lifelessness of the protag!!!