#intheearth

The big news this week is that New York’s Film at Lincoln Center has reopened with a retrospective celebrating the 50th Anniversary of FilmLinc’s long-running collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films, which will begin on April 28. You can see the full line-up of the 2021 New Directors/New Films here, though I’m not sure how much I’ll be covering this year. (see above) It will take place in the virtual cinemas of FilmLinc and MOMA for people across the country and for those in New York City at the reopened FilmLinc theaters.

Leading up to that date, there will be a two-week retrospective called New Directors/New Films at 50, which will screen at the FilmLinc theaters as well as on Virtual Cinema, and that line up is:

Duvidha dir. Mani Kaul

Following dir. Christopher Nolan

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick dir. Wim Wenders

The Living End dir. Gregg Araki

Lucía dir. Humberto Solás

My Brother’s Wedding dir. Charles Burnett

Peppermint Candy dir. Lee Chang-dong

Playing Away dir. Horace Ové

Les Rendez-vous d’Anna dir. Chantal Akerman

Sleepwalk dir. Sara Driver

Twenty Years Later dir. Eduardo Coutinho

Speaking of festivals, apparently there is a Brazilian genre fest going on right now called Fantaspoa 2021 that takes place on the Brazilian streaming horror service Dark Flix.

I have family in Brazil including a filmmaking cousin so I wonder if they know about this, but they seem to have a lot of cool and interesting films to share… and someday I hope to watch some of them. :)

Let’s get into some of the theatrical releases, shouldn’t we?

Filmmaker Ben Wheatley (High-Rise, Free Fire) is back with his eco-thriller IN THE EARTH (Neon), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It stars Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia as Dr. Martin Lowery and Alma, two park rangers sent into the woods in search of missing researchers only to encounter an odd and eccentric hermit woodsman named Zach (Reece Shearsmith), who has lots of crazy ideas about nature and its effects on humans, so he proceeds to capture and torture the two rangers.

This is another one of Wheatley’s stranger films, one that he completely filmed and completed during the pandemic, and I’m not even sure what I can completely explain in the second half of the movie, not just due to spoilers but also because it just goes into some fairly out there places. But no mistake that this is true horror, especially when you see how the two main characters have to deal with the situation they found themselves in.

What’s interesting is that the story takes place during a pandemic but not necessarily the one we’re currently in, but as Martin and Alma get deeper into the woods, horrible things start happening. They’re attacked in their tents while sleeping and their shoes are stolen and then Martin gets a nasty cut on his foot that gets infected with something almost plant-like, which leads to a fairly tense and horrifying scene later on.

The movie shifts pretty drastically in the second half as the duo encounter another researcher named Olivia (Hayley Squires), who happens to be Zach’s wife AND Martin’s ex-girlfriend. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie, but it’s also one where it’s never really more than the two or three characters at a time. The movie can be slow at times but it always maintains the viewer’s interest in what is happening and what might happen next. And then it just gets so strange in that last act, really trippy and surreal and crazy with lots of fast-cut images and loud noises that really puts the viewer even further on edge. OH, and as you can see from the picture, Zach has an axe, which takes the film into places more akin to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and away from the more cerebral stuff.

Where In the Earth really transcends is that it’s just such a great looking movie, and when you have a composer like Clint Mansell providing the score, as he did with Wheatley’s High-Rise, then you end up with a movie that works quite well for what it’s trying to do, which is to astound, disorient and puzzle the viewer but in a way that makes them want to watch it again and try to figure out more with each viewing.

As weird as the movie is, I could see there being an audience for the movie, particularly when you consider how movies like The Witch and Hereditary and Midsommar and The Lighthouse have found a niche audience or auteur lovers. Oddly, all four of those movies were released by A24, offering further proof that NEON is trying to get in on their turn.

I’m not quite sure how many theaters NEON is putting In the Earth into, but Wheatley’s latest eco-thriller maybe a harder sell with no known stars, and it’s definitely gonna be looking to bring in cinephile and auteur-huggers more than the normal Joe or Jill off the street. I expect NEON will try to get the movie into at least 1,000 theaters with many screens and reopened movie houses looking for content, but I’m not sure I’d expect this to do that much better than last week’s Voyagers, but maybe $3 million or so. It just doesn’t have much chance against a mainstream movie like Godzilla vs. Kong.

Anyway, check it out. I’ll have an interview with Ben Wheatley over at Below the Line probably early next week.

Another movie I highly recommend for horror fans is Travis Stevens’ JAKOB’S WIFE (RLJEfilms/Shudder), which stars the terrific Barbara Crampton and equally great Larry Fessenden as Ann Fedder, a woman married to the local small town pastor (aka Jakob), who feels that she hasn’t been able to live her full life while married to him for 30 years. When she has an encounter with a mysterious figure known as “The Master,” she finds herself gaining powers that allow her to live a new life but it has dark effects on her and everyone else in the town.

One thing I probably should mention is that I’ve known Larry Fessenden for a long time -- a friend of mine co-starred in his early movie Habit -- and I’m just a huge fan of Barbara Crampton from her classic horror films and more recent ones like my pal Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here, which starred both of the actors.. And was produced by director Travis Stevens. See, how it all comes together?

This is another movie I don’t want to say too much about, as to not spoil your enjoyment of watching the various elements coming into place. Fessenden and Crampton are great as always, but I particularly like how Stevens has made a fairly contemporary horror movie that throws back to classic tropes like Cronenberg body horror and straight-out giallo blood flying everywhere.

I will say that the story involves a bit of a twist on the vampire movie, but more in vein of the weirdness from that 1988 Nicholas Cage movie, Vampire’s Kiss, versus anything like a studio Dracula movie, but it gives the two actors (especially Crampton) a chance to shine and really show different aspects of their abilities. Oh, also there’s lots of rats… lots and lots of rats...

Jakob’s Wife is a pretty fine independent horror film that certainly will deal a number of shrieks and squeals, and though it’s opening in theaters, On Demand and digital, much like most of RLJEfilms/Shudder’s offerings, I wish there were more of the local genre movie houses in which to watch it with a crowd cause even the SXSW Premiere probably wasn’t the same without an audience. Sigh, when will this fucking pandemic be over?!?

Oh, and by the way, I have an interview with Stevens over at Below the Line, so check that out to learn more.

Before we get to the rest of the new movies, let’s check out what’s going on at a few of my local digs, the Metrograph and Film Forum. Metrograph is just wrapping up another Aaron Sorkin retrospective, just three movies this time that wrapped with The Trial of the Chicago 7 (again) last night. On Friday, you can catch Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar-nominated Another Round, starring Mads Mikkelsen, running as part of its digital Live Screenings series… I keep saying and will keep saying until you list. It’s $5 a month to join and watch a ton of cool movies!

Michael and Christian Blackwood’s Monk in Europe runs until next Monday and then there’s a few others also running through the weekend. Just click on that link above and join already!

At the Film Forum, Hitchcock’s great Rear Window is just wrapping up today, and I’m bummed I didn’t get a chance to see it on the big screen again. Starting Friday is Alec Guinness and Kind Hearts and Coronets, which had a pretty successful run at Film Forum in the before-times. The doc Gunda (right below) is also starting there in its reopened theaters as is the Norwegian Oscar entry Hope, starring the always great Stellan Skarsgard.

Victor (Aquarela) Kossakovsky’s acclaimed documentary GUNDA (NEON), which played most of the festivals last year is finally getting a bonafide theatrical release. It’s a black and white cinema verité that follows the lives of a number of farm animals, a mother pig, some chickens and a herd of cows. As a fan of The Biggest Little Farm, this is a movie that I’m apt to enjoy since I love nature docs, but it also involves staring at a screen (mostly my TV set) watching animals, which I really have to be in the right mood for, and it’s really been tough to get into that mood in the past year.

Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough star in Argyris Papadimitropoulos’s MONDAY (IFC Films) as Americans living in Athens who meet and have a whirlwind weekend one hot summer. Gough plays Chloe, whose time in Greece is coming to an end, but she has to decide whether to pass up a big job back home to see if the weekend she had with Stan’s Mickey is worth exploring and turning into something more serious. I do hope to get to this one eventually, but who knows when?

Gabriel Carrer and Reese Eveneshen’s FOR THE SAKE OF VICIOUS (Dread) stars Lora Burke as Romina (Lora Burke), single mother and nurse, who returns home after a late shift on Halloween night to find a maniac hiding in her home with a beat-up hostage. When a mob of intruders invade Romina’s home, the three have to work together to survive. The movie will hit theaters on Friday, be available via On Demand on Tuesday and then hit Blu-ray on May 4, so you’ll have lots of options to see it.

Barry Pepper stars in Brad (“24,” “Homeland”) Turner’s TRIGGER POINT (Screen Media), which will hit theaters this Friday and be On Demand on April 23. In it, he plays retired U.S. special operative Nicolas Brazer, who worked as a shadow assassin for the government but disappeared into a life of solitude after being accused of killing his team. Two years later, he’s drawn back into the world to clear his name and maybe turn a new leaf.

I don’t have a ton to say about this film, especially cause we just saw it in a much better version of this movie called Nobody. Pepper’s a great actor and that’s probably what saves Trigger Point from being a total loss, but it’s a fairly dry by-the-books crime thriller with a fairly generic plot that we’ve seen plenty of times before and often quite a bit better.

Also out this week is Christo Brock’s craft beer documentary BREWMANCE (Giant Pictures), which looks at… you guessed it… the history and obsession that a number of brewers have with craft beer. This is a fine doc, but like Gunda, I have to be in the right mood for it, and I’m just so busy that I never was able to just sit down and just concentrate on watching this.

Alan Yuen, the screenwriter of New Police Storyand director of Firestorm return with THE ROOKIES (Shout! Studios!), starring Alu Wang and Milla Jovovich. Wang plays daredevil and extreme sports lover Zhao Feng, who gets caught up in an illegal trade scheme when he crosses paths with Jovovich’s Special Agent Bruce and she recruits him for the Order of the Phantom Knighthood. The group is dedicated to fighting evil in all its incarnations, and it’s a ragtag outfit of four rookies with different skills. This sounds like my kind of jam, and at any other time, I would have had more time to watch and review it. Two weeks before the Oscars is not that time.

Devereux Millburn’s HONEYDEW (Dark Star Pictures/Bloody Disgusting) stars Sawyer Spielberg and Malin Barr as a young couple forced to seek shelter in the home of an aging farmer (Barbara Kingsley from “Jessica Jones”) and her odd son until they start having strange hallucinations and cravings. It’s a little odd that two horror sites, Dread Central and Bloody Disgusting, have movies out this week as they venture in distribution. But I just didn’t have time to see either movie. Sorry, guys!

And then the other movies I wasn’t able to get to this week include:

BEAST BEAST (Vanishing Angle)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

NIGHT OF THE SICARIO (Saban Films)

BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (Kino Lorber)

OUR TOWNS (HBO/HBO Max)

GOODBYE BUTTERFLY (Gravitas Ventures)