It’s looking like a rainy weekend in Memphis. Lucky for you, there’s some new movies out.
Deadpool & Wolverine
The Merc with the Mouth teams up with Canada’s favorite mutant to repair a rift in the multiverse. Ryan Reynolds returns as Deadpool, the only Marvel comic book character who knows he’s in a comic book — or in this case, a movie. Hugh Jackman comes out of superhero retirement to reprise his role as Wolverine. This time he’s wearing that fetching yellow outfit Logan wore in the comics, but was deemed too cheesy for the screen. This is the first R-rated Marvel movie, so expect some cussin’.
The Fabulous Four
Bette Midler’s getting married in Key West, and her college besties Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally, and Sheryl Lee Ralph are on coming to the party. This outrageous road trip will rekindle friendships and open old wounds.
Longlegs
The art horror sleeper hit directed by Osgood Perkins is the creepy slow burn you’re looking for. Maika Monroe stars as an FBI agent, who may or may not be psychic, assigned to a case that has stumped the agency for decades. Nicolas Cage delivers a tour de force performance as a satanic serial killer with a glam rock fetish. This film is even weirder than it sounds, and I mean that in a good way. Read my full review.
PlayTime
The eyes of the world are on Paris this week, as the City of Light hosts the Summer Olympics. So it’s an appropriate time for Crosstown Arts’ film series to feature one of the great masterpieces of French film. Jacques Tati’s PlayTime is something rare: an epic comedy. Shooting over the course of three years in the 1960s on gigantic sets built to mimic (and mock) the glass and steel architecture that was taking over Paris at the time, it was the most expensive French film ever made. It’s nearly wordless, nearly plotless, and hilariously slapstick.
Memphis filmmaker Zaire Love’s confidence was boosted when she won both the Best Narrative Short and the Best Documentary Short awards at Indie Memphis 2023. It was a feat that had never been equalled in the 25 year history of the festival. “On a personal level, it really showed me that I can do it,” she says.
For “Slice,” the winning documentary short, it was only the beginning. “We had our festival run in 2023, and we got into over 20 festivals,” she says. “We won seven festivals. And honestly, that’s rare. It is rare that you get into that many festivals, and it is rare that you are winning or a finalist in it.”
“Slice” is about a uniquely Memphis sport. Think of it as the aquatic equivalent of jookin — acrobatic dives that are unlike the highly technical aerial maneuvers you’ll see at the Paris Olympics over the next two weeks. “Rico [the subject of “Slice”] says if you took somebody at the Olympics, they couldn’t even do what we do,” says Love.
For Love, the short film took up much more of her life than she had expected when she started filming four years ago. “I graduated my MFA program in 2020, and that’s when I considered myself what I wanted to be: a filmmaker. Right after graduation, I start this project that I’m thinking is going to be something that only takes maybe two weeks, and then I’m out of here. But it did take longer. And it has proven to be life-changing.”
The truth is, most documentaries take longer to make than narrative films. “It’s a whole different beast,” says Love. “You can plan all you want, but in documentary, you really have to be able to pivot, because you didn’t know that you were going to get certain gems, certain really special moments that you can’t just file away in the archive. So you got to figure out how to put those nuggets in your film.”
After gaining attention on the festival circuit, “Slice” was licensed by The New Yorker as part of their film series. It premiered on Thursday, July 25th, the day before the Paris Olympic’s opening ceremonies. “I learned that we have so many stories that need to be told, but I also learned to trust myself and trust my vision. Trust that me coming to a project with good intentions to, again, amplify and immortalize, it just showed me that I can do this. It really shows me that like Andre 3000 said, the Black South got something to say, and people really want to listen. So I just feel like it was just confirmation that this is what I’m supposed to be doing in life. This is why I’m here.”
Dragons dance at the 2024 Asian Night Market at Tiger Lane. (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Last Saturday, July 20th, the 2024 Asian Night Market attracted thousands to Tiger Lane. The second annual event was moved from the Crosstown Concourse, where it was held last year, since the crowds were so much bigger than anticipated. It was a good move because this year’s event was absolutely huge.
I was there with my trusty iPhone camera rig to capture the sights and sounds of the sprawling street fair, which brought together the Asian American communities from all over the tri-state area. I wish could have captured the smells, too! Food cooking in dozens of tents, and spices from all over the world, made this little corner of Midtown an olfactory heaven for one glorious evening. Despite the occasional logistical snafus incurred by any rapidly growing public event, a good time was had by all. Take a look.
Daisy Edgar-Jones and
Glen Powell chase storms and each other in Twisters. (Photo: Courtesy Universal Pictures)
Legend has it that when James Cameron, fresh off of the success of The Terminator, made his pitch to 20th Century Fox executives that his next film should be a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, he simply wrote the name of the film on a whiteboard and added an “s.” Then he put a line through the “s,” so that it read Alien$. The execs immediately greenlit Aliens, which went on to earn the 2024 equivalent of half a billion dollars at the box office.
One wonders if that story was on the mind of Joseph Kosinski when he went to Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to pitch his idea for a sequel to the 1996 disaster film Twister. Simply adding the “s” did get the film greelit, but Kosinski himself didn’t get the directing gig. That went to Lee Isaac Chung, whose last film, Minari, was an Oscar-nominated story about Korean immigrants trying to make it as farmers in Arkansas. (Don’t feel bad for Kosinski. He directed Top Gun: Maverickinstead.)
Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you that Twisters is no Aliens. Cameron expanded the original idea of “haunted house movie in space” into a knock-down, drag-out sci-fi action picture. Twisters just does the same thing as Twister, only with more tornadoes.
But more tornadoes are better, right? Not if you’re from Oklahoma, like Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), the wunderkind meteorologist turned storm-chaser. She’s seen twisters devastate Tornado Alley too many times. Now, with her friend Javi Rivera (Anthony Ramos) and a group of like-minded grad schoolers in tow, she’s trying out a radical, new theory. Kate doesn’t just want to chase tornadoes; she wants to destroy tornadoes. Her plan is to launch barrels full of sodium polyacrylate — the moisture absorbing chemical used in diapers — directly into a tornado. The chemical onslaught will absorb the swirling water vapor which fuels the tornado, causing the funnel cloud to fall apart, and allowing the storm-chasers to live happily ever after. Unfortunately for both her dissertation and the continued health of her fellow storm-chasers, the tornado she chooses for a test turns out to be an F5 monster, but she only brought enough diaper goo to tame an F1.
Five years later, Kate’s got a steady job as an NOAA weather forecaster, based in New York City. Javi shows up at her office with a proposition. He’s working for Storm Par, a company that’s using military-grade antimissile radar to scan active tornadoes, which they hope will greatly improve forecasts for their private clients. After initially refusing the call to adventure like any good Hero’s Journey protagonist, she agrees to get back in the storm-chasing game. Back in Oklahoma for the kind of “once in a generation” tornado outbreak which happens every year nowadays, she meets Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, Hangman from Top Gun: Maverick), a storm-chaser with a thriving YouTube channel, a tricked-out truck, and a gang of plucky misfits. Since Kate is on the Heroine’s Journey, she’s got two guys to choose from. Will it be her nerdy old friend Javi or the hunky “cowboy meteorologist”? And how many more will have to die before both teams realize Kate’s anti-tornado tech was on the right track?
The answers to Twisters pressing questions are: 1. It doesn’t matter, and 2. Lots of people who also don’t matter. Sure, Powell’s jawline is so strong Tom Cruise could land an F-18 on it, but when it comes to romantic tension, Twisters is totally flaccid. Even though the tornado outbreak flattens farms houses, rodeos, and, in a nod to The Blob, a sold-out movie theater, this disaster movie is bloodless. Chung is a good director of actors, and Edgar-Jones, Powell, and Ramos give it their best shot, but they can’t seem to elevate the action into something I cared about, even when the bad guys are revealed to be disaster capitalist chuds of the We Buy Houses variety. Part of the problem is that Twisters is so repetitive. The opening scene with Kate and company fleeing from an F5 crackles, but it soon becomes evident that the intro emptied Chung’s trick bag. Twisters isn’t a bad film, per se; the Marvel era has produced much worse pablum than this. But it does commit the summer blockbuster’s worst possible sin: It’s just plain dull.
Memphis hip hop godfather and secret engine of American popular culture Juicy J has a new album called Memphis Zoo. It’s not about the place in Overton Park where they keep the lions. It’s about the eclectic cast of characters who populate our fair, but often troubled, city.
The single “Bury My Problems” sees the rapper/producer/mogul in an unusually reflective mood. He’s talking about the stress of living in a neighborhood that feels under constant assault from both within and without. He’s also saying that money and success don’t solve your problems like you think they will. As one YouTube commenter put it, “Juicy J making bangers off of mental health problems.”
The music video, directed by Juicy with an assist from Jack Rotier and visual effects by blindcapvision, is kind of a masterpiece. For the first part of the song, Juicy’s in a 3D animated world of cars, money, and jookin’, straight out of the classic Rick James playbook. Then, he deliberately undercuts the glossy gangster life glow-up by revealing the green screen studio and returning the Mercedes to the rental house. The visual is taking you behind the scenes, at the same time the lyrics are revealing vulnerability. It’s a masterclass of form following function. Take a look.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Little Nell as Columbia in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
What’s up on the big screen this week? Quite a bit. Let’s get to it.
Twisters
A big city scientist named Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) returns to her small-town Oklahoma roots, where she meets Tyler (Glenn Powell), a rough and ready storm chaser who shows her how to live more authentically. Is this the plot of a Hallmark movie? Nope. It’s Twisters, the long-gestating sequel to the 1996 summer blockbuster Twister. Will they find love among the devastation? Or will they end up gone with the wind?
National Anthem
Dylan (Charlie Plummer) lives an unhappy life in rural New Mexico, until they find a community of queer ranchers and rodeo queens. Based on a true story in the life of director Luke Gifford, who adapted his book National Anthem: America’s Queer Rodeo. Screening exclusively at Studio on the Square.
Time Warp Drive-In
This month’s Time Warp Drive-In, Saturday, July 20, features the film that gave the series its name. The theme is “Scary Melodies: Horror Film Musicals,” and you know what that means: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Take it away, Riff Raff!
In the spirit of Rocky Horror is director Darren Lynn Bousman’s 2008 cult classic Repo! The Genetic Opera. It’s the far future, and your organs are yours on a rental basis only. If you miss a payment, the Repo Man comes calling. Let’s sing about it!
Rounding out the triple feature is a film from the legendary grindhouse studio Troma. It’s Cannibal! The Musical, the film that puts the “dinner” in the Donner Party.
The Time Warp Drive-In is $25 per carload. The show kicks off at dusk on Saturday at the Malco Summer Drive-In.
Longlegs isn’t bad. Really. It’s got Nicolas Cage, who plays a pretty convincing creepy serial killer.
The Silence of the Lambs is frequently credited as the film that made horror respectable. Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Best Picture winner was not the first horror film recognized by the Academy — The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture, and ultimately took home two Oscars in 1973. But when Silence won the Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actor/Best Actress/Best Adapted Screenplay combo, the genie was out of the bottle for good.
Silence’s influence has reverberated through the decades. “Serial killer stories” have become their own subgenre. Without Jodie Foster’s indelible turn as Clarice Starling, there would be no Dana Scully on TheX-Files, for example. Maika Monroe’s character Lee Harker in Longlegs also owes her existence to Foster’s genius. Her foil, a serial killer who calls himself Longlegs, has Hannibal Lecter’s eerily insane genius about him. But where Anthony Hopkins brought an eerie stillness to Lecter, Nicolas Cage brings … well, Nicolas Cage.
After an opening flashback to her childhood in the 1970s, we see Agent Harker on assignment for the FBI, going door to door searching for a killer in a normal-looking suburb circa 1995. She somehow knows exactly which house the suspect is hiding in, which turns out to have disastrous consequences. In the first of several striking psychedelic sequences director Osgood Perkins drops throughout the film, she is called to take a test to see if she has psychic powers. When she scores high on the test, she is assigned to assist Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) on the Longlegs case. It’s a baffling situation: a series of murder-suicides covering decades. But these seemingly unrelated cases are all united by presence of mysterious letters written in code and signed “Longlegs.” How is the killer persuading fathers to murder their whole families, then leaving without any physical trace? The answer will require cryptography, a little telepathy, and a deep dive into Harker’s past.
Perkins has a knack for deeply unsettling visual compositions. The first time we see Cage as Longlegs, his eyes are cropped out of the shot, emphasizing his creepy psychopath grin. Longlegs, with a modest budget of $10 million, lacks flashy CGI or gratuitous gore. Instead, Perkins relies on character work, impeccable staging, creative camera moves, and, when he is finally revealed as the villain, an all-out sensory assault by Cage. Everybody needs to stop pretending Nic isn’t a genius. He’s one of the greatest actors of our time. Everything about Longlegs, from his unnatural paleness to his obsession with glam rock mystic band T. Rex, screams “dangerously insane.”
Monroe is compelling, if a little one-note, as the deeply damaged investigator whose life intrudes on her investigation. She has great chemistry with Alicia Witt, who plays her mother, a homebody hoarder and religious fanatic who is both the traumatizer and the traumatized. Blair Underwood’s dark humor as Harker’s boss provides a welcome counterpoint to Monroe’s twitchy neuroses, until Perkins turns the relationship on its head.
I’ll admit to having pretty low expectations for Longlegs, and I was a little surprised when my Friday night screening was sold out. Not everything Perkins tries works (and while his experimental streak appeals to me, it might put some folks off), but most of what he’s throwing against the wall sticks. It’s once again proof that when you hire Nicolas Cage, you always get your money’s worth.
Sure, it’s Monday, but it’s never too early to Thank God It’s Friday. That’s the message from GloRilla with the latest single “TGIF” off her album Ehhthang Ehhthang. She’s been barnstorming the country with Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer tour, and it’s been super hot.
The new video, directed by Jerry Morka and produced by Diesel Filmz is a classic tour video. Glo and her girls show off her tour bus, party in some swank locales, and dazzle enormous audiences. And they twerk. A lot.
The video is already a smash hit, currently #3 on YouTube’s music video charts with 13.4 million views and counting. Go Glo!
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Maika Monroe wonders what it all means in Longlegs. (Courtesy Neon)
Looks like a busy weekend at the movies — which is good, because it’s gonna be a hot one.
Longlegs
The great Nicholas Cage stars as a serial killer motivated by his devotion to Satan. Maika Monroe (of It Follows fame) is Lee Harker, an FBI agent assigned to catch him. Blair Underwood (of Krush Groove fame) is her partner, and Alicia Witt (of Dune and Twin Peaks fame) is her mom. Writer/director Osgood Perkins is not super famous yet, but his dad is Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame.
Fly Me To The Moon
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star as NASA’s PR director and launch director for the Apollo 11 mission. His job is to get the astronauts to the moon. Her job is to fake the moon landing if the astronauts fail. This film probably sounded like a good idea at the time.
MaXXXine
Ti West and Mia Goth’s trilogy of twentieth century terror concludes with a slam-bang finale. Read my full review.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Lupita Nyong’o leads this hit prequel to 2018’s alien invasion movie. She plays Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who witnesses the silent alien invasion in New York City. Can Sam and her cat Frodo survive the mass slaughter? Djimon Housou reprises his role as Henri from AQuiet Place Part II.
Despicable Me 4
You know those oval yellow Minons your batty aunty and drunk uncle are always sharing memes about? They’re from the Despicable Me franchise. And guess what? They made another one!
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone follow the Academy Award-winning Poor Things with a triptych of stories about debasing yourself for the benefit of others. Read my full review.
Inside Out 2
The movie of the summer is all about anxiety, and it couldn’t be more timely. Amy Poehler reprises her voice role as Joy, whose hold on the mind of her 13-year-old charge Riley (Kensington Tallman) is jarred loose by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), just a a pivotal hockey game threatens her self image.
The Bikeriders
Director Jeff Nichols’ gritty portrait of Midwestern biker gangs stars Austin Butler and Tom Hardy looking mighty manly. Read my full review.
Mia Goth reprises her role as aspiring actress Maxine Minx, while Kevin Bacon joins the cast as a sleazy PI. (Photos: Courtesy A24)
In 2022’s X, the first of the three-film collaboration between director Ti West and actor Mia Goth, a newbie film crew descends on a Texas farmhouse intending to make a porn flick. Instead, they become the latest victims of Pearl (Goth, in heavy makeup), an elderly woman who bears a strong resemblance to Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho. Only Maxine Minx (Goth, au naturel) escapes the carnage.
In MaXXXine, our eponymous heroine actually visits the Bates Motel — the real one, which still stands on the Universal back lot. She’s there because her Hollywood dreams have begun to come true. But the past just won’t let her go. As Faulkner said, it’s not even past.
West and Goth’s collaboration began on the set of X, when the backstory she had developed for the killer granny Pearl so impressed the director that he decided to make it a prequel. Pearl goes deep into the oppressive patriarchy of rural Texas in the 1920s that twisted a young girl’s ambition into a murderous psychosis. Sixty years later, you can see the same ambition burning in Maxine. It’s 1985, and she’s made it as a porn star in the Valley, the porn industry’s dark mirror image of Hollywood. Now she wants to go legit and get parts in “real” movies, which are filmed on the side of the Hollywood Hills where you can see the big sign.
When she strides into an audition with director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), it’s clear she’s got the juice. She slays her monologue from memory, conjuring tears on demand, which impresses the stoic director. Then, Bender asks Maxine if she would take off her shirt so they could see her tits. Not a problem, says Maxine. Later that day, Maxine gets a call from her agent Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito). She got the part. Now she just has to live long enough to make the movie.
This is more challenging than it might sound. The Night Stalker serial killer is taking victims in Southern California, and dominating the headlines. When Maxine goes to what is hopefully her last day on the job at the peepshow, she’s followed by a mysterious figure in a wide-brimmed hat. After work, her friends Amber (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby (Halsey) invite her to a big party in the Hollywood Hills, but Maxine declines. She’s got to learn her lines, and it won’t do to show up to her first day on the set with a hangover. It looks like she made the right choice when Amber and Tabby’s bodies are found wrapped in plastic and branded with Satanic pentagrams.
Is it the Night Stalker? Maybe. But there’s more weirdness floating around. Maxine gets a lunch invitation at a swanky restaurant from a man named Labat (Kevin Bacon). He’s a private investigator who has been hired to find Maxine and threatens to frame her with the murders, which have become known as the Texas Porn Star Massacre, unless she goes to meet his client at a swanky address in the Hollywood Hills. Meanwhile, two LAPD detectives, Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), come calling. They’ve noticed that Maxine seems to be the only person who knows all of the recent victims of the Night Stalker, but who is not yet dead. They offer her protection if she will talk. But they don’t understand who they’re dealing with. Maxine doesn’t need protection. She’s got dreams, a good agent, and her trusty pearl-handled pistol.
Mia Goth’s performances in X and Pearl were the revelation of a major new talent. In MaXXXine, she’s a cocaine-powered whirlwind of ruthless ambition. If she has to kill a few people to see her name in lights on the marquee, then people will die. This might not seem like the makings for a sympathetic character, but her enemies are so much worse. Kevin Bacon drips with sleaze as the utterly amoral private dick sent to retrieve Maxine. When he follows her into a strobe-lit New Wave club where Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” throbs through the sound system, the film shifts into overdrive. From there, West keeps the pedal to the metal.
In true Hitchcock fashion, MaXXXine’s gonzo climax takes place in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. Ti West has studied Hitch and his disciple Brian De Palma’s early-’80s run of erotic thrillers like Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double. But MaXXXine is not a Tarantino pastiche of cool scenes from other people’s movies. There’s a difference between sampling and working in a mode. West and Goth transcend their influences. Yes, these films are in conversation with the past’s lowbrow classics, but they never lose sight of their primary mission: Make it kick ass.
