Dir - Marielle Heller
Overall: MEH
A not-really werewolf movie for the moms, Nightbitch is the latest from writer/director Marielle Heller, adapting Rachel Yoder's 2021 novel of the same name. What the film gets right is its relentless agenda to un-romanticize motherhood. Amy Adams plays a woman two years into raising her first child, still has not dropped the baby weight, figures "Why bother?" when it comes to wearing makeup, puts her artistic career on hold, and hunkers down in her suburban house while her well-meaning yet clueless husband gets to travel for work and bring home the bacon. Adams spends her days trying to keep her little tyke entertained, going to those horrendous sing-a-long things at libraries full of other moms who have nothing in common with each other besides the fact that they procreated, going to the park, going to the grocery store, and letting her child sleep in the same bed as her which guarantees that actual sleep is always off the menu. It is no wonder that she gradually unravels to the point where she displays bestial qualities, all after we witness numerous fantasy sequences where she spouts her true feelings as narration. Adams is great, and there is plenty of on-the-nose humor and relatable moments that any struggling couples can relate to in the early stages of parenthood, but the story treats its fantastical elements as an afterthought and eventually abandons them with no payoff or explanation.
Dir - James Ashcroft
Overall: MEH
New Zealand director James Ashcroft adapts his second Owen Marshall short story in full-length form with The Rule of Jenny Pen, a psychobiddy movie where instead of female actors in their twilight years battling it out with each other, we have Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. The best/only good thing about this is the casting. Both Rush and Lithgow look and behave older than they are as two unlikable men who are waiting to die in an old folk's home, and the film is nothing more than a hundred and four minutes of their squabbling plight. In this sense, it is unpleasant for unpleasantry's sake, presenting itself as a quasi-black comedy where elder abuse inflicted by elder people is played for laughs, gross-out effect, and depressing disturbingness. Lithgow has made a career out of being either the charismatic family man or the charismatic villain, and he seems to be enjoying himself with a doll puppet on his hand and a down under accent, terrorizing Rush and the other residents while gleefully, (and more to the point, annoyingly), getting away with it. The plot never bothers to explain why Lithgow's antagonist has seemingly been at this particular old folk's home for decades on end and has presumably never been reprimanded or even suspected of foul play by any of the staff. Here lies the issue though since anyone watching this, (whether they are of an age to relate or have had family members in such dire straits), will be persistently uncomfortable by the proceedings. If the movie was clever or went anywhere then maybe this would be tolerable, but it does not, so it is not.
Dir - Elric Kane
Overall: MEH
Director/co-writer Elric Kane's The Dead Thing is a confused musing on the type of social detachment that can plague young adults who go through the motions in menial jobs, with casual sex, and desperately find themselves in relationships that are no good for either party. Exploring all of this via a ghost story is an adequate idea, but this concept only holds together for the first act. After that, it becomes increasingly lost in gaping plot holes and vague supernatural logic, meanwhile everyone on screen remains at a distance from both each other and the audience. This latter ingredient is no doubt intentional, since Kane and co-scripter Webb Wilcoxen have an agenda to show how impossible it is for people to find connection in a world of online dating and unfulfilling distractions. The characters are no fun, but they are relatable if one can look past how broadly they are presented. What is worse though is how the plot meanders after its initial set up, presenting moments that are implausible either with or without a dead Tinder hookup who is lingering around, distorting time, and murdering people without anyone noticing. Then again, maybe none of these moments are what they seem, but it is all too murky to successfully pull off any kind of psychological trippiness. Even though her protagonist is stuck in a one-note depression, Blu Hunt still manages to excel as someone who occasionally tries to snap herself out of that depression. Sadly, the film that she is in cannot decide on what to do with either her or with any of the head-scratching scenarios.
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