stevecaponejr
Joined Apr 2013
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Reviews8
stevecaponejr's rating
Film Title: The Thing With Feathers
Director: Dylan Southern
Screenwriter: Dylan Southern
Based on: Grief is the Thing With Feathers (Max Porter)
Production Companies: MK2
Release Date (USA, Sundance): January 25, 2025
Capone's Rating: 4.5⭐ out of 5⭐
Principal Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Boxall, Henry Boxall
I have to get something off my chest.
Most modern horror fans might take issue with it, but I need to say it.
I've about had it with trauma horror. Protagonists' whose core characteristics are shorthanded with references to abuse, deaths of loved ones, or compounded microaggressions-we can tell horror stories without these elements, you know? And we can build more thoroughly developed characters. And I have enough actual trauma in my own family-in my own personal experience-that I don't want to meet with it every time I enter a movie theater for a horror film.
Okay. All that being said:
The Thing With Feathers is explicitly and directly about grief after the passing of our protagonist's spouse. His two young children, boys, miss their mother-and dad thinks it best to hide his emotions from them for fear of making things worse for everyone. But as we all know from other trauma-infused horror stories, grief deined will manifest as something spooky. The protagonist's reification of emotion is a monstrous thing with feathers-a crow. And he seems to know it's not real, but he responds as though it is, a clear sign of stress- or grief-induced psychosis. And it's not real for us, either. It signifies his pain, and it talks him through it.
To get the right vibe for The Thing With Feathers, think Babadook (2014) with more therapy and the saddest montage since the opening of Up (2009). And despite what I said above about tiring of trauma-inspired horror, Dylan Southern's effort works very well. Benedict Cumberbatch and the Boxalls (Richard and Henry) are fantastic-the latter pair much less annoying than the kid in Babadook, whose awfulness admittedly was core to the mother losing her grip. Cumberbatch in particular shines as a man overcome by fear of forgetting his wife, not wanting to let her go. The most profound concept the film explores through our protagonist's experience is the distinction between grief and despair: Grief is natural and appropriate; despair is neither.
Four point five of five stars.
I have to get something off my chest.
Most modern horror fans might take issue with it, but I need to say it.
I've about had it with trauma horror. Protagonists' whose core characteristics are shorthanded with references to abuse, deaths of loved ones, or compounded microaggressions-we can tell horror stories without these elements, you know? And we can build more thoroughly developed characters. And I have enough actual trauma in my own family-in my own personal experience-that I don't want to meet with it every time I enter a movie theater for a horror film.
Okay. All that being said:
The Thing With Feathers is explicitly and directly about grief after the passing of our protagonist's spouse. His two young children, boys, miss their mother-and dad thinks it best to hide his emotions from them for fear of making things worse for everyone. But as we all know from other trauma-infused horror stories, grief deined will manifest as something spooky. The protagonist's reification of emotion is a monstrous thing with feathers-a crow. And he seems to know it's not real, but he responds as though it is, a clear sign of stress- or grief-induced psychosis. And it's not real for us, either. It signifies his pain, and it talks him through it.
To get the right vibe for The Thing With Feathers, think Babadook (2014) with more therapy and the saddest montage since the opening of Up (2009). And despite what I said above about tiring of trauma-inspired horror, Dylan Southern's effort works very well. Benedict Cumberbatch and the Boxalls (Richard and Henry) are fantastic-the latter pair much less annoying than the kid in Babadook, whose awfulness admittedly was core to the mother losing her grip. Cumberbatch in particular shines as a man overcome by fear of forgetting his wife, not wanting to let her go. The most profound concept the film explores through our protagonist's experience is the distinction between grief and despair: Grief is natural and appropriate; despair is neither.
Four point five of five stars.
Film Title: Opus
Director: Mark Anthony Green
Screenwriter: Mark Anthony Green
Distribution Notes: A24 will distribute the film
Release Date (USA, Sundance): January 27th, 2025
Capone's Rating: 4⭐ out of 5⭐
Mark Anthony Green's feature debut, Opus, is quite a ride. Ayo Edibiri is perfectly cast as a young and not-overly-impressionable journalist, Ariel, hoping to cover the story of the year-the reapperance of a reclusive pop icon who's been off stage for thirty years. At first, it's clear no one in her chain of command will offer her a break, but they can't say no when she receives a personal invitation to a meet-n-greet with the famed rocker, Moretti.
At the remote location where Moretti hosts the event, John Malkovich is effervescent as the star who's rekindling the adoration of all in attendance-except for Ariel, who seems to be the only one who notices the oddities surrounding the crew of journalists hand-selected for the occasion.
In this spoiler-free review, I'll cast the rest of this film in suggestive but vague and in positive terms: This is a horror-comedy falling into the cult sub-category, and what the astute viewer will see right away as a final girl story plays off of our expectations. It's wild, though, taking turns that will surprise the most seasoned horror critic or fan. We're on this journey together and with Ariel, and Ayo Edibiri is our medium through which we'll live through Moretti's increasingly bizarre and upsetting world of sycophantic devotion.
All in all, I get the sense that, like most A24 films, audiences will either love or hate the grotesque humor splattered prodigiously throughout this movie. This horror fanboy loved it at Sundance.
Four of five stars.
Mark Anthony Green's feature debut, Opus, is quite a ride. Ayo Edibiri is perfectly cast as a young and not-overly-impressionable journalist, Ariel, hoping to cover the story of the year-the reapperance of a reclusive pop icon who's been off stage for thirty years. At first, it's clear no one in her chain of command will offer her a break, but they can't say no when she receives a personal invitation to a meet-n-greet with the famed rocker, Moretti.
At the remote location where Moretti hosts the event, John Malkovich is effervescent as the star who's rekindling the adoration of all in attendance-except for Ariel, who seems to be the only one who notices the oddities surrounding the crew of journalists hand-selected for the occasion.
In this spoiler-free review, I'll cast the rest of this film in suggestive but vague and in positive terms: This is a horror-comedy falling into the cult sub-category, and what the astute viewer will see right away as a final girl story plays off of our expectations. It's wild, though, taking turns that will surprise the most seasoned horror critic or fan. We're on this journey together and with Ariel, and Ayo Edibiri is our medium through which we'll live through Moretti's increasingly bizarre and upsetting world of sycophantic devotion.
All in all, I get the sense that, like most A24 films, audiences will either love or hate the grotesque humor splattered prodigiously throughout this movie. This horror fanboy loved it at Sundance.
Four of five stars.
Film Title: How to Build a Library
Director: Maia Lekow, Christopher King
Screenwriters: Maia Lekow, Christopher King, Ricardo Acosta
Production Companies: Circle and Square Productions
Release Date (USA, Sundance): Jan 26, 2025
Capone's Rating: 4⭐ out of 5⭐
When some of us hear the words "the legacy of colonialism," we don't know exactly what to picture. I usually imagine something ineffable-emotions, generational trauma or wealth, or control. But How to Build a Library is a film tackling the legacy of colonialism in a concrete manner, allowing those of us not experiencing the downsides (despite enjoying-ugh-many of its benefits without noticing) to understand at least some of its damage.
How To Build a Library follows two women, Shiro and Wachuka, as they fight for the funding and political support to empower communities through revitalizing and reinventing community libraries in Nairobi, Kenya. The main library they're working to improve has been there since long before 1958, the year when access opened to Black people. After that access changed, the library and its branches remained-before Shiro, Wachuka, and their organization Book Bunk got to it-a repository for evidence of White cultural domination. That physical evidence includes photographs of White imperialists lording over native peoples, the first hanging in British-controlled Kenya, books like British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850, old copies of English science fiction anthologies, and videos of natives performing dances for outsiders who could only see them as exotic subjects to be controlled through violence. In short, the modern people who actually live in and use the main library (named for imperialist McMillan) and its branches are nowhere represented in the collections as they existed at the time the film began documenting.
Libraries are excellent representatives of what the dominant culture in a given society values, and it makes me wonder: What do our libraries say about our own dominant cultures, and are we able to build representative spaces where all library patrons can see, find, and help themselves? (See my last film review, The Librarians, for why the answer to this question may not be so heartening.)
As sad as this cultural destruction and silencing is, in fact, the film is not primarily a documenting of these impacts of colonialism-its legacy, as it were. Rather, Wachuka and Shiro are triumphing, and this film holds a record of that triumph via beautification and democratization of a public space. If you're looking for a documentary depicting individual Kenyans taking action to improve their community, and you want a recognition of, yes, the legacy of imperialism without that being the core focus of the film-this is a film for you. How To Build a Library does not yet have distribution rights arranged, but we can hope for this outcome in the near future.
When some of us hear the words "the legacy of colonialism," we don't know exactly what to picture. I usually imagine something ineffable-emotions, generational trauma or wealth, or control. But How to Build a Library is a film tackling the legacy of colonialism in a concrete manner, allowing those of us not experiencing the downsides (despite enjoying-ugh-many of its benefits without noticing) to understand at least some of its damage.
How To Build a Library follows two women, Shiro and Wachuka, as they fight for the funding and political support to empower communities through revitalizing and reinventing community libraries in Nairobi, Kenya. The main library they're working to improve has been there since long before 1958, the year when access opened to Black people. After that access changed, the library and its branches remained-before Shiro, Wachuka, and their organization Book Bunk got to it-a repository for evidence of White cultural domination. That physical evidence includes photographs of White imperialists lording over native peoples, the first hanging in British-controlled Kenya, books like British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850, old copies of English science fiction anthologies, and videos of natives performing dances for outsiders who could only see them as exotic subjects to be controlled through violence. In short, the modern people who actually live in and use the main library (named for imperialist McMillan) and its branches are nowhere represented in the collections as they existed at the time the film began documenting.
Libraries are excellent representatives of what the dominant culture in a given society values, and it makes me wonder: What do our libraries say about our own dominant cultures, and are we able to build representative spaces where all library patrons can see, find, and help themselves? (See my last film review, The Librarians, for why the answer to this question may not be so heartening.)
As sad as this cultural destruction and silencing is, in fact, the film is not primarily a documenting of these impacts of colonialism-its legacy, as it were. Rather, Wachuka and Shiro are triumphing, and this film holds a record of that triumph via beautification and democratization of a public space. If you're looking for a documentary depicting individual Kenyans taking action to improve their community, and you want a recognition of, yes, the legacy of imperialism without that being the core focus of the film-this is a film for you. How To Build a Library does not yet have distribution rights arranged, but we can hope for this outcome in the near future.